The bat mitzvah, women reading Torah and becoming rabbis, men and women praying together, embracing modern technology on Shabbat, incorporating instruments into Shabbat services, changing and creating new prayers, the list goes on and on. Now, there are many in our larger Jewish community who turn up their noses to the idea that Judaism changes over time. By evolving we have not just survived, we have thrived. At the foundation of Reconstructionist Judaism is the idea that Judaism is an evolving civilization. Rabbi Kaplan believed that this openness, which he argued has always been a part of our tradition, is why we have survived as a people. While we embrace traditional aspects of Judaism, like Jewish communities across the world, Ramat Shalom incorporates many practices that reflect our people’s openness to innovation and change. The bat mitzvah is just one of many rituals we embrace today that our grandparents and great-grandparents would have had trouble wrapping their heads around. I should point out that Rabbi Kaplan, Judith, and her husband, Rabbi Eisenstein, were no strangers to our founding families here at Ramat Shalom. As a result, Judaism, at least the Jewish world outside of the more traditional Jewish community of the 1920’s, became a little bit more egalitarian. Wanting to empower his daughter, Judith, Rabbi Kaplan created the bat mitzvah. Kaplan was actually excommunicated by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis. Some would say he was a troublemaker – even a heretic. Not just because of the bat mitzvah, Rabbi Kaplan was a pioneer, a boundary pusher, an innovator. But, 100 years ago, it was radical, an innovative process developed by Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan whose beliefs lie at the foundation of Reconstructionism. This month, the bat mitzvah turns 100! Most of us consider a bat mitzvah a mainstream Jewish ritual. And the bat mitzvah is a product of Reconstructionism. This being said, most everyone knows what a bat mitzvah is. Lots of people are unfamiliar with the Reconstructionist Movement, the theology it embraces and the fact that it falls somewhere between the Reform and Conservative movements. My congregation, Ramat Shalom, was founded 46 years ago as a Reconstructionist synagogue.
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