Bat mitzva

In Jerusalem, a Bat Mitzvah celebration honors fatherless girls – and a long-term promise

At Colel Chabad’s annual 22 Shevat event, daughters of widows mark a milestone with music and joy, as organizers stress a commitment that extends far beyond a single day.

Daughters of widows celebrate their bat-mitzvah at Chabad’s annual 22 Shevat event
Soldiers praying at the Kotel in 2013.

'I never had a bar mitzvah,' lone soldiers from Ethiopia to celebrate at the Western Wall

An IDF orphan, wearing a beret from the Nachal Brigade, celebrating his bar mitzvah at the Kotel in Jerusalem, October 20, 2025.

Forty-eight IDF orphans mark bnei mitzvah at Western Wall

Athar Aboreesh worked as a counselor on the IDFWO’s Superheroes Trip.

From Yarka to New York: An IDF Orphan’s Journey of Healing


Celebrating at Jerusalem's Tower of David: A bar, bar mitzvah initiative

The museum has become a meeting point for families from the North and the South who are now residing in many of Jerusalem’s hotels.

 SPECIAL DAY: Rotem Sapir at the Tower of David

Coming of Age at Meir Panim

Or Akiva Branch celebrates festive Bar Mitzvah for four celebrants.

 The Bar Mitzvah celebrations in Or Akiva

‘And Just Like That…’ star Alexa Swinton is having her bat mitzvah in Israel

It’s Swinton’s first visit to Israel, where she has many relatives she has never met before.

 THE STARS of ‘And Just Like That...’

‘Cocaine Bear’ star Alden Ehrenreich got big break after Spielberg saw him at a bat mitvzah

Ehrenreich, now 33, made a scrappy home movie that he and other friends showed at the bat mitzvah ceremony in 2009.

 DIRECTOR STEVEN SPIELBERG waves to the audience after receiving the Honorary Golden Bear Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 73rd Berlinale International Film Festival, in Berlin, on Tuesday.

A small girl with a big heart raises funds for the Michael Levin Base

Michael had always spoken about his dream to provide support for lone soldiers, which he himself lacked while in the army – and The Base does just that.

 CHAYA RECEIVES a Certificate of Appreciation from The Base.

Disney+ doc traces Idina Menzel’s rise, from the bat mitzvah circuit to Broadway

The film, directed by Anne McCabe, follows Menzel’s 2018 arena tour, along with Josh Groban, which culminated in Menzel fulfilling her lifelong dream of headlining Madison Square Garden.

 Idina Menzel performs in a scene from "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage."

To those whose Bar and bat mitzvahs were disrupted by haredi hooligans, I share your fury

My Zionism doesn’t stop if I’m not forever enchanted; my Zionism survives the good, the bad and the ugly.

 WHEN POLICE unfairly arrested women praying at the Western Wall, Natan Sharansky fumed: It cannot be that ‘Israel, the Jewish state, is the only place in the world where women are arrested for praying Hallel.’

Ronald Lauder condemns Western Wall incident as ‘antisemitic’

WJC head: Ultra-Orthodox reaction in egalitarian section was antisemitic

Flag parade revelers reach the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, May 22, 2009.

Orthodox protesters again disrupt prayer at Western Wall as monthly ritual repeats

Thousands of black-attired young yeshiva students swarmed a group of about 100 women and a dozen men who accompanied them to the Western Wall.

 The The Western Wall Heritage Foundation's new ‘Western Wall Heritage Center’

American synagogues mark 100th anniversary of the US's first bat mitzvah

The first bat mitzvah in the US was that of Judith Kaplan in 1922.

 Judith Kaplan's bat mitzvah in 1922 set the precedent for millions of American Jewish women, including the ladies of Temple Emanuel in 1989.