Judith Kaplan Eisenstein and the bat mitzvah

[George Robinson <GRComm...>]

Khaverim --

I don't know if this answers the question exactly, but here's a lengthy
excerpt from Debra Nussbaum Cohen's obit for JKE, which went out from
the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about five years ago.

George Robinson

February 23, 1996 

First bat mitzvah, Judith Kaplan
Eisenstein, dies at 86

DEBRA NUSSBAUM COHEN

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

NEW YORK -- Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, the mother of the bat mitzvah
and the daughter of one of the 20th century's most influential
theologians, has died.

Kaplan Eisenstein, who was also a noted authority on Jewish music as
well as a composer and lyricist, died Wednesday of a heart attack at age
86 while in a Rockville, Md., hospital recovering from a broken hip.

Those who knew her remembered her as a vibrant woman with a strong
will and a deep commitment to Judaism the way her father, Rabbi
Mordecai Kaplan, articulated it -- as an evolving civilization.

The oldest of the theologian's four daughters, Kaplan Eisenstein was
encouraged by her father to question and challenge Orthodox views.

"When I was 11, I told my father that I didn't believe in God," she
recalled during an interview in 1994.

"There was a sense of freedom and freedom to change. There was a
constant opening up of possibilities and enrichment" with his view of
Judaism, she said.

"It made my being Jewish a great joy for me rather than a burden," she
said.

At the age of 12, and under her father's tutelage, she completed the
very first bat mitzvah at the newly founded Society for the Advancement
of Judaism in Manhattan.

Her father had thought of the idea only a day before. That night, she
practiced reading the Torah portion with him.

"I didn't work on it the way kids work on it now, for a half year with
lessons every week," she said in 1992, shortly before her
accomplishment was celebrated again 70 years later.

"All I did was read it through with him Friday night, and Saturday
morning I went into the synagogue and did it," she said.

The ceremony pro-ved to be a revolutionary breakthrough.

Today all but the most stringently Or-thodox girls celebrate their bat
mitzvah in some form.

Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist girls are called to the Torah
during synagogue services and generally give a sermon as well.

Many Orthodox girls mark the day by speaking to the women of the
congregation about the Torah portion of the week. There often is a
festive party, as well.

Even more significant for many is the fact that Kaplan Eisenstein's bat
mitzvah was the first time that a female had stood before the
congregation as a leader.

"It was an opening of opportunities, dreams that suddenly become
available," said Rabbi Shohama Wiener, president of The Academy for
Jewish Religion, an independent rabbinical and cantorial seminary
located in Manhattan, just down the street from the Reconstructionist
synagogue founded by Mordecai Kaplan.

Kaplan Eisenstein earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music from
Columbia University.

>From 1929 to 1954, she taught music education and the history of
Jewish music at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She published a book
of children's music, "Gateway to Jewish Song," which quickly became a
staple of teachers of Jewish nursery school.

In 1934, Kaplan Eisenstein married her father's closest disciple, Ira
Eisenstein, who was working as Kaplan's assistant rabbi at the Society
for the Advancement of Judaism.

She began writing cantatas rooted in Judaism in 1942, and ultimately
published seven, some in collaboration with her husband.

While in her 50s, she earned a doctorate at the Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion's School of Sacred Music.

She published a book on the history of Jewish music, "Heritage of Jewish
Music," which is still in print and widely read.

Kaplan Eisenstein taught music at that Reform movement seminary and
at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, which was founded by her
husband in Philadelphia in 1968.

She reminded Reconstructionist Jews of the importance of music and the
arts in living a life committed to Judaism, said Rabbi Mordechai
Liebling,
executive director of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, which is
based in Wyncote, Pa.

She and her husband were popular teachers at the Reconstructionist
Rabbinical College community until they retired to Woodstock, N.Y., in
1980.

In the house where they had spent weekends for many years, in a town
where there was no organized Jewish community, they started a
chavurah, a prayer and study group.

"They brought in old lefties and musicians and artists who wouldn't be
caught dead in a synagogue," said Jonathan Kligler, a Reconstructionist
rabbi and spiritual leader of Kehillat Lev Shalem-The Woodstock Jewish
Congregation, founded 10 years ago.

"They got this group of Jews together and made a real chevra [group of
friends] out of them," said Kligler, who took over leading the chavurah
when the couple moved to Silver Spring, Md., last September to be near
one of their daughters.

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