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A Bat Mitzvah Observation - Term Papers

A Bat Mitzvah Observation

I attended the Bat Mitzvah for the daughter of a family friend. I grew up in Protestant churches, so I was unfamiliar with these traditions. The Bat Mitzvah is a rite of passage where a 13-year-old young lady demonstrates her mastery of important Judaic concepts and skills, and becomes a member of the congregation.
This service was held on a Saturday morning, because the Jewish Sabbath runs from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. The mitzvah is part of the Saturday morning worship service, a service that takes several hours. The young person participates in important ways in the service.
The most important thing this girl had to do was read from the Torah in Hebrew. The passage ...

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entire Torah is read in on year. Then they have a special ceremony where the scrolls are rewound back to the beginning for the next year. They were stored in a beautiful and elaborate case at the front of the Temple, and treated with great reverence.
Our Jewish friends arranged for me to sit with someone who could explain what was going on. Because this was a conservative Temple, or a Temple that tried to incorporate as many of the old ways as possible into modern life, much of it was in Hebrew.
I observed some things that were markedly different than the church services I am familiar with. First, everyone was very dressed up. Most of the women wore hats and no adults were dressed casually. I saw no one in jeans. The men all wore skullcaps, including visitors for the Bat Mitzvah who were not Jewish. Many of the men and some of the women had prayer shawls on.
Although it was obvious that everyone took the service seriously, many small children were present. In the churches I ...

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A Bat Mitzvah Observation. (2015, October 25). Retrieved April 28, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/A-Bat-Mitzvah-Observation/105120

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 10/25/2015 04:42:19 AM
Category: Personal Writing
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 659
Pages: 3

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