JUDY LED THE WAY

Papa, why can there be no music in the synagogue? Why do men and women sit separately? Why don’t women read the Torah? Do I have to believe in God?

In the 1920s the world was changing for women. Maybe it was time for things to change in the synagogue as well. But when Judy’s father, Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, said it was time for her to lead services, she nearly dropped the noodle kugel. It was unthinkable. Or was it? The tradition of bat mitzvah in the synagogue had just begun.

In this illustrated biography, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso tells the story of Judy Kaplan, the first girl to have a bat mitzvah ceremony in the United States in 1922. Judy was the oldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.