With several rapidly approaching celebrations of a Bat-Mitsvah in our kehillah, and given that Tamar’s Bat-Mitsvah is only six years away, my eyes were drawn to a teshuva by R. Ovadia Yosef questioning whether the celebrations themselves are appropriate as well as whether the father should recite the blessing of "barukh she-petarani," the way he would for a boy. To avoid any trepidation as to the conclusion, I should mention now that he rules permissively and approvingly on both issues.

It is, however, worth mentioning that R. Moshe Feinstein, ztllh"h, denied such celebrations the status of se`udot mitsvah— he thought they were no more than a birthday party—and preferred that they not take place in a shul , even at a time when there was no davening going on. He repeated this belief in several teshuvot, in one of which he explained that he believed a girl differed from a boy in that the boy’s accession to adulthood produces publicly visible change in his halakhic status. The boy is now called up to the Torah, counts for a minyan, and so on. With a girl, the outward, public manifestations of her adulthood are lacking.

Two historical notes about this teshuva. First, it was written in 1957 (and I found no place after 1961 that he reiterated his position, although he may well have believed it all his life), a time when the Bat-Mitsvah ceremony appears to have been devoid of Torah content. He was more accepting of a Shabbat morning kiddush after shul, since people make those for all sorts of occasions, At such a kiddush, he did not mind the girl’s saying a few words, particularly if the rabbi asking the question saw this as a legitimate opportunity to bring the girl closer to Torah and mitsvot. However, he generally believed that these occasions often lead to hillul Shabbat, and for that reason he was not particularly comfortable with Bar-Mitsvah celebrations, either. Since he knew the long tradition of seudot mitsvah for a Bar-Mitsvah, it seems at least possible that the context in which he was being asked the question (America in the 1950’s, when Orthodoxy was considered a fossil) played some role in his answer. R. Ovadia’s, yibadel le-hayyim tovim ve-arukim, strong support for the custom also suggests that R. Moshe’s opposition is worth wondering about.

The second interesting point in R. Moshe’s teshuva is that in the same teshuva he takes the position that one can use one dishwasher for meat and milk as long as one changes the racks in between. I mention that not le-halakhah, because I have not researched it fully, but just as an interesting view.

Getting back to Bat-Mitsvah, R. Ovadia focuses first on the form and meaning of the berakha of barukh she-petarani (Blessed be He Who has freed me of the punishment of this one). Because of a dispute as to whether or not to recite the blessing with the Name of God and a mention of His Rule of the world (shem ve-malkhut), and R. Ovadia’s personal doubts as to whether we recite blessings not recorded in the Talmud, and the general tendency to avoid making unnecessary berakhot, he rules that the blessing should be said without shem ve-malkhut.

The meaning of the blessing is also disputed— one view says that the father is now freed of the punishment he might incur by not educating his child properly, and the other view believes that the blessing celebrates the child’s new freedom from the possibility of suffering for the sins of the parent.(Although this is not the place for it, we should note that many sources assume that minor children might get sick or even, rahmana litslan, pass away as a consequence of their parents’ sins). The second view would certainly ratify saying the blessing at a Bat Mitsvah, since girls as much as boys can become entrapped by their parents’ sins.

Even in the first view, the blessing should apply to Benot Mitsvah. Hakham Ovadia discusses the issue, but concludes that a father is in fact just as obligated to educate his daughters to be able to live full adult Jewish lives as he is to train his sons to that level. He notes that some authorities include mothers in the obligation of hinukh, of training our children to keep the mitsvot. (In fact, the Mishnah Berurah notes that many aharonim include mothers in this obligation). He therefore says that, especially since we do not use shem ve-malkhut in the blessing, mothers in addition to fathers (and certainly in the absence of fathers) should recite the blessing of barukh she-petarani.

Daf Yomi