You go girls!

When Jean Mellman, 86, Shirley Boster, 87, Harriet Korn, 93, Naomi Schottenstein, 81, Fannie Shkolnik, 92, and Shirley Yaffe, 85, were young, bat mitzvah ceremonies - the female equivalent of a boy's bar mitzvah, typically at 13 - didn't exist. Today, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews offer bat mitzvahs for girls; Orthodox synagogues do, too, but the girls don't read from the Torah. In recent years, rabbis across the country have offered ceremonies to elderly women to make up for what they didn't have available when they were young. Rabbi Cary Kozberg has modified the typical Torah reading requirement of a bat mitzvah. Each woman will read a Hebrew blessing before the rabbi reads a portion of the Torah and explain the meaning in their life. And of course, the perspective will be very different than that of a 12 year old.

'Girls' to finally have bat mizvahs | The Columbus Dispatch