Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age
Project Components
Project management, including: contracting between exhibition partners, budget management, liaising with designer, guest curators, and exhibition contributors
Management of an artifact collecting initiative around the history of bat mitzvah in America
Editing of film and audio files for exhibition
Installation oversight
Booking of travel venues on a multi-city, multi-year, national tour
Grant writing to secure foundation funding in support of the exhibition
In only 100 years, the bat mitzvah—a sacred rite of passage for Jewish young women—has moved from the margins of Jewish communal life to the mainstream.
In 2012 Moving Traditions and the National Museum of American Jewish History joined forced to create and circulate a traveling exhibit, Bat Mitzvah Comes of Age, tracing the history of this quintessentially American Jewish rite through the stories of women who were “bat mitzvah firsts” across denominations and geographies: the first in their families, the first in their communities, the first in their city.
The exhibition included moving personal narratives, photography, a timeline, and an audio tour in which these “bat mitzvah firsts” told their own stories, in their own words. The exhibit also invited visitors into the conversation by asking such questions as, “When have you been a first?” and, “What is a 21 st - century innovation that you hope might one day become a communal expectation?”
