Judith Kaplan Eisenstein
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Dr Judith Kaplan |
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| Born | September 10, 1909 |
| Died | February 14, 1996 Bethesda, Maryland |
| Education | Columbia University, Juilliard School, Jewish Institute of Religion, Jewish Theological Seminary Teachers Institute |
| Known for | Author, musicologist and composer, first to publicly celebrate a Bat Mitzvah |
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| Children | 3 |
Judith Kaplan (September 10, 1909 – February 14, 1996) was a musician, theologian and the first person to celebrate a Bat Mitzvah publicly which she did on March 18, 1922, aged 12.
The bat mitzvah was created to address the gender imbalance and is the female equivalent of a boy’s bar mitzvah, signifying entrance into religious majority. Judith was the oldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism, her bat mitzvah was the first time that a woman led the congregation as such it represents a significant shift for Conservative Judaism in America. Until this time women did not engage in public reading of the Torah and a Jewish girl's transition from child to adult was not reflected synagogue ceremonies.
Reflecting on the ceremony many years later she said: "No thunder sounded. No lightning struck." "It all passed very peacefully". Bat mitzvah ceremonies are now commonplace within the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist branches of Judaism. At the age of 82, Kaplan had a second bat mitzvah. Various feminist and Jewish leaders, including Betty Friedan, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Ruth W. Messinger, and Elizabeth Holtzman were present.
During her life she was an author, musicologist and composer. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Columbia University and studied at the Institute of Musical Art, now the Juilliard School. She published a book of children's music, "Gateway to Jewish Song," and a number of cantatas on Jewish themes, including the popular "What Is Torah," with her husband, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein whom she married in 1934. Her translations of Hebrew songs are now enjoyed by Jewish children throughout the US. She taught music education and the history of Jewish music at the Albert A. List College of Jewish Studies from 1929 to 1954. She taught at School of Sacred Music of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York from 1966 to 1979.
She died on February 14, 1996, in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her papers are included in the Ira and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein Reconstructionist Archives of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
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