On March 19, 1922, Mordechai Kaplan, one of the founders of Reconstructionist Judaism, led his daughter Judith through the blessings and verses of the first bat (bas) mitzvah. As Judith Kaplan famously recounted, “The moment itself was fairly uneventful: no thunder sounded, no lightning struck.”

In her book about Judith Kaplan’s story, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso says to all young women: “You are linked with people from long, long ago. Stay connected. Find joy in being Jewish.”