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🎉 A Jewish ceremony 🎉 To confirm religiously
bat mitzvah

bat mitzvah

7 7.6
A Jewish ceremony for a girl at about 12 that marks becoming an adult in the faith
  • noun
  • /bɑt ˈmɪtsvɑ/
translation icon : bat mitzvá
  • Happy bat mitzvah, baby.
  • bat mitzvah ceremony
  • bat mitzvah girl
  • bat mitzvah party

But it was a stark contrast to my bat mitzvah in the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA.

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Examples

  • Lisa knew that Catholic women even remembered their First Communion dresses, just as Tiff would remember her bat mitzvah dress for as long as she lived.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Well, I studied really hard for my bat mitzvah, and I was studying during the time we were shooting this movie.

  • "So, are you excited about the bat mitzvah?"

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Thank you, everybody, for coming out to celebrate my little girl's bat mitzvah.

    Starsky & Hutch (2004)

  • I had the honor of officiating at the service when she became a bat mitzvah.

    Tahara (2020)

  • But it was a stark contrast to my bat mitzvah in the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, MA.

    Funny Or Die

  • A drum roll signals the arrival of the bat mitzvah cake, which the caterer rolls in on a white table for everyone to see.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • We celebrated Emily's bat mitzvah with a beautiful ceremony at the temple.

  • At her bat mitzvah, she read from the Torah and gave a speech to her family and friends.

  • Many attendees brought gifts and cards to honor Sarah on her special day of becoming a bat mitzvah.

Synonyms

bas mitzvah
vsbat mitzvah
  • UK
9.2

A Jewish ceremony that marks a girl's 12th birthday and her new religious duties as an adult

is the same ceremony but written in an alternative traditional form

Surface Forms

bat mitzvah singular
bat mitzvahs plural

Morphology

bat + mitzvah

Although 'mitzvah' means a commandment or good deed and 'bat' is a Hebrew word meaning 'daughter', this cultural and etymological information is not likely known to an average B1 learner; the phrase refers to a specific coming-of-age ceremony rather than a literal combination of the parts. The meaning is culturally specific and not transparently derivable from the constituent words for most learners, so prior exposure is needed.

Etymology

Bat mitzvah comes from Hebrew: bat means 'daughter' and mitzvah means 'good deed' or 'command'. It is the ceremony that marks a girl becoming an adult in the Jewish community, so the phrase means 'a girl's coming-of-age ceremony'.