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‘I wanted to be more me’: Teens propel a trend toward gender-neutral mitzvah ceremonies
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives.
(JTA) — Like many Jewish teens, Ash Brave was nervous for their b’nai mitzvah. Memorizing the Torah portion, sending invitations, planning a party: It’s a lot for a 13-year-old to think about during what can already be an anxiety-filled age.
Despite the typical stress involved with preparing to enter the adult Jewish community, Brave cheerfully described their gender-neutral b’nai mitzvah last summer, recalling feeling “really supported [by] the whole synagogue.” For teens like Brave, an eighth grader from Boulder, Colorado who uses he and they pronouns interchangeably, gender-inclusive b’nai mitzvahs (often termed “b’mitzvahs”) offer an opportunity to come of age as their full selves.
Across the country, there is an expanding list of Jewish community centers, day schools, Hillels, organizations and more that include and celebrate LGBTQ+ identities. Many synagogues are following suit with the ceremonies they offer and the language they use. Some congregations are initiating these changes on their own; in other cases, the teens themselves are propelling the shifts.
Traditionally, most synagogues hold gendered b’nai mitzvah, with bar mitzvahs for boys and bat mitzvahs for girls (“b’nai” is the Hebrew plural form meanings “sons and daughters,” although it is technically masculine). Increasingly, many Jewish congregations are moving towards gender-inclusive b’nai mitzvah ceremonies. Synagogues like Har Hashem, a Reform synagogue in Boulder, have been offering these ceremonies for years at the request of their congregants. Because of these shifts, many gender nonconforming Jewish teens feel a deeper sense of belonging in their religious communities.
According to Rabbi Fred Greene of Har Hashem, the synagogue holds approximately 25 b’nai mitzvah ceremonies annually. In the last year, three of those were gender-neutral. Although the congregation has offered the option for almost five years, this is the first year they have had teens opting for the inclusive version. Greene said that the congregation also has teens who have transitioned after their b’nai mitzvah. He estimates that they have 5-7 teen congregants who identify as trans or genderqueer, meaning they do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
B’mitzvahs at Har Hashem mirror the traditional gendered ceremonies in everything but language. “We have folks that don’t feel like a ‘ben’ or a ‘bat,’” said Greene, using the Hebrew words meaning “son” and “daughter.” “So we come up with other Hebrew terms, [such as] ‘beit,’ which is from “the house of [parent name].” He said that a number of changes can be made to the Hebrew to increase inclusivity, ranging from the creation of new terms to using the infinitive version of words that would otherwise be gendered. “We’re not treating anybody any differently, other than being sensitive to their needs,” he said.
Ruby Marx, a 16-year-old who uses she/her pronouns, had a gender-neutral b’mitzvah with Temple Beth Zion in the Boston area in early 2020, pre-pandemic. “I always knew that I was gonna have to have [a b’nai mitzvah]. But when it came time to start thinking about it, I was like, ‘I really don’t feel comfortable having a bat mitzvah.’ But I wasn’t comfortable [having a bar mitzvah], either. So someone suggested that I do something in the middle. And that felt right for me.”
Marx, who describes herself as gender-fluid, was the first teen in her congregation to have a ceremony that didn’t fall within either the bar or bat categories. In the years following, several other teens in her community have had gender-neutral ceremonies, including one having an upcoming ceremony in mid-March.
“I don’t think anyone else had done something like that before,” said Marx. “I think a lot of other kids started to feel comfortable being like, ‘oh, maybe that’s something I would want to do,’ or incorporating different things that they’re passionate about [into their ceremonies].”
For her ceremony, she wore a prayer shawl featuring rainbow trimming and various rock n’ roll patches from her favorite bands. Marx said that the most rewarding part of her experience has been being a trailblazer for inclusion in her congregation. “It definitely feels good to know that I can help other kids feel comfortable being who they are, because I know that sometimes I’m not always comfortable being who I am. It’s nice to know that kids can look up to me,” she said.
Gender inclusion in b’nai mitzvahs has been expanding for decades, beginning with the American introduction of the bat mitzvah in 1922 for the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, in New York City. Before that, only boys were allowed to engage in the important coming of age tradition. After Judith Kaplan’s ceremony, the custom slowly spread across the country in non-Orthodox synagogues. For decades, however, the ceremonies for girls differed from those offered to boys: In many synagogues, girls were not allowed to read from the Torah, and their services were held on Friday nights rather than Saturday mornings. Orthodox synagogues were slow in accepting the bat mitzvah, and still maintain strict gender roles in synagogue.
Ruby Marx playing the guitar during a benefit concert they held for their mitzvah project. (Courtesy Pamela Joy Photography).
As feminism progressed both outside and within Jewish communities, girls pushed to be allowed to read from the Torah and to be counted towards a minyan, the 10-person quorum required for public prayer. Full bat mitzvahs became an accepted norm. A similar pattern is now occurring for b’mitzvahs.
As a coming of age ritual, b’nai mitzvahs occupy a unique role in Jewish life. Their goal is to integrate young Jews into the broader community, signaling that they have the knowledge and maturity to take on adult ritual responsibilities. Because of this, many young trans Jews wish to have a ceremony that will fully reflect them as they become more involved in their community and beyond.
Brave, the Colorado teen, chose to have their ceremony gender-neutral to ensure it still fit them down the road. “I don’t really know what I’m going to identify as in the future, because identity is fluid. And while I may be comfortable right now with being closer to a male identity, [later] I might be less comfortable with that,” they said.
Marx, the gender fluid teen outside of Boston, said entering the community as her authentic self was an integral part of her choice. “I had grown up watching all my cousins, and then my sister, have [ceremonies]. Afterwards, they were a lot more independent in their Jewish identity. That was something that appealed to me, because I wanted to be connected to the Jewish community, but I wanted to do it in my own way,” said Marx.
B’mitzvahs aren’t the only gender-inclusive ceremony offered now. Many Reform congregations have also created ceremonies for gender transitions, Hebrew name changes, and coming out, often based on a curriculum offered by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. “These are holy moments of growth and transformation, and we want to be supportive in their journeys,” Rabbi Greene of Har Hashem said. Brave also had a ceremony with Har Hashem to change their Hebrew name, and the synagogue made them an updated yad — a pointer used in reading Torah — to match.
Teens who were not able to do their ceremony gender-neutral say having access to inclusive ceremonies would have increased the enjoyment and meaning of their b’nai mitzvahs. “I would have felt more like I was stepping into my own skin, instead of the skin [of someone] that I was pretending to be,” said Mica Newmark. The 17-year-old, who uses they/them pronouns, had a gendered ceremony at Nevei Kodesh, a Renewal synagogue in Boulder, before coming into their identity more. Since their ceremony, Newmark has grown apart from religion. “I don’t really relate anymore,” they said.
Even teens who were more clear on their identity struggled with having gendered ceremonies. Jay, a 15-year-old from Boulder, came out immediately following their ceremony. (Jay, estranged from a parent who has a leadership role in their synagogue, asked that their last name be omitted.) They found the ceremony “pretty stressful” and their coming out experience difficult, explaining that they wanted everyone to understand the concept of existing outside of the gender binary, but didn’t feel that was possible at the time. “I had really long hair then, so I wanted to cut it, and just be more me,” Jay said. “But I was really stressed, because I knew I was going to get misgendered at the ceremony.”
Keshet publishes a guide to “design and support affirming b’mitzvah celebrations.” (Keshet)
In the following years, Jay helped to institute the use of pronoun pins at synagogue events, as well as generally making an effort to educate community members on transgender issues. “I think [gender-neutral ceremonies] allow queer Jewish people to embrace their religion and continue to flourish within Judaism without feeling gendered,” they said.
Keshet, a national Jewish LGBTQ+ organization, published a guide for b’mitzvah ceremonies. “Celebrating the Age of Mitzvah: A Guide for all Genders” includes information from what to call the ceremony to what the dress code should be, all aimed at helping communities create inclusive and meaningful traditions.
The need for the resources came from synagogues and young congregants, said Jackie Maris, the Chicago education and training manager for the organization. “It’s not just Jewish boys and girls becoming Jewish men and women, it’s Jewish kids of all gender identities becoming Jewish adults,” said Maris. “Having a tool that helps guide everyone through that process, with gender-expansive language and rituals that include folks beyond the binary, is very needed.”
Keshet recently updated the resources. “Adjusting practices to make them more inclusive is what has always been done in Jewish tradition,” said Maris. “Even ancient practices and rituals have evolved over time, and because they are human constructed, we continue to humanly evolve them.”
However, a number of communities still mainly offer gendered ceremonies. Orthodox synagogues and others that are non-egalitarian have not made widespread shifts towards gender-neutral ceremonies.
Despite the strict gender separation in Orthodoxy, there is also a growing push for inclusion of LGBTQ+ individuals in these spaces. Organizations like Eshel, a nonprofit based in the United States and Canada, work to provide LGBTQ+ Orthodox jews and their families with resources for living and thriving in Orthodox Jewish spaces. Other organizations are targeted specifically at teens, such as Jewish Queer Youth, which engages queer youth from Orthodox, Hasidic and traditionalist Sephardi/Mizrahi communities.
“LGBTQ youth who live in a community that is accepting of LGBTQ people reported significantly lower rates of attempting suicide than those who do not,” reports The Trevor Project. For both Brave and Marx, their communities, families and friends were largely supportive of their decision to have non-gendered ceremonies. “It definitely felt like the community showed me a lot of love to be able to do that,” Marx said. “I was really able to be myself.”
By expanding inclusion, Jewish institutions are expanding their reach and impact, as well as creating more engaging communities. “I don’t think that God creates in vain. And so, while there’s a lot of people that are still learning, including myself, about issues relating to gender and identity, our role as a sacred space and a Jewish community is to have an open tent where folks can enter in any doorway they want, because there are no doors,” said Rabbi Greene of Har Hashem.
Brave said that their ceremony made them feel fully included in their synagogue. “It felt good to officially be a part of a community that I can’t really get taken away from,” they said.
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The post ‘I wanted to be more me’: Teens propel a trend toward gender-neutral mitzvah ceremonies appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Says It Kills Senior Hamas Commander Raed Saed in Gaza
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a car in Gaza City, December 13, 2025.REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
The Israeli military said it killed senior Hamas commander Raed Saed, one of the architects of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, in a strike on a car in Gaza City on Saturday.
It was the highest-profile assassination of a senior Hamas figure since a Gaza ceasefire deal came into effect in October.
In a joint statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saed was targeted in response to an attack by Hamas in which an explosive device injured two soldiers earlier on Saturday.
The attack on the car in Gaza City killed five people and wounded at least 25 others, according to Gaza health authorities. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas or medics that Saed was among the dead.
HAMAS SAYS ATTACK VIOLATES CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT
An Israeli military official described Saed as a high-ranked Hamas member who helped establish and advance the group’s weapons production network.
“In recent months, he operated to reestablish Hamas’ capabilities and weapons manufacturing, a blatant violation of the ceasefire,” the official said.
Hamas sources have also described him as the second-in-command of the group’s armed wing, after Izz eldeen Al-Hadad.
Saed used to head Hamas’ Gaza City battalion, one of the group’s largest and best-equipped, those sources said.
Hamas, in a statement, condemned the attack as a violation of the ceasefire agreement but did not say whether Saed was hurt and stopped short of threatening retaliation.
The October 10 ceasefire has enabled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza City’s ruins. Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.
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Hezbollah Chief: Disarmament Would Be ‘Death Sentence’ for Lebanon
Lebanon’s Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem gives a televised speech from an unknown location, July 30, 2025, in this screen grab from video. Photo: Al Manar TV/REUTERS TV/via REUTERS
i24 News – Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem said on Saturday that it was not the responsibility of the Shiite terror group “to prevent aggression,” but rather the Lebanese state’s, and it is the responsibility of Hezbollah to engage “when the state and army fail to do so.”
In a recorded televised statement, Qassem sarcastically posed the question whether it was not Hezbollah that should be demanding the Lebanese Army’s disarmament if the latter fails to stop “Israel’s ongoing aggression.”
On the issue of disarming Hezbollah, Qassem said that disarming it in the manner currently proposed is a death sentence for Lebanon.
“Even if the sky falls, we will not be disarmed, not even if the entire world unites against Lebanon. We will not allow this and it will not happen,” Qassem said.
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High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community
(JTA) — The photo spread swiftly after a student posted it on social media: Eight California high schoolers were lying on their school’s football field, their bodies arrayed in the shape of a swastika.
Alongside the picture was a quote from Adolf Hitler, threatening the “annihilation of the Jewish race.”
The incident at Branham High School in San Jose began on Dec. 3 and has roiled the local Jewish community in the days since, as the wrenching saga has ignited suspensions, recriminations and alarm from around the world.
The photograph and the response to it were first reported by J. Jewish News of Northern California.
“We don’t want to see hatred,” Cormac Nolan, a Jewish Branham senior, told the local Jewish newspaper. “We don’t want to see the idolization of one of the most evil men to ever walk the face of the Earth. We don’t want someone who spews out hatred like this on our campus.”
The school’s student newspaper reported that the students involved had been suspended, and that dozens of other students walked out to protest the incident.
The San Jose Police Department told J. that it is investigating the incident, and the school’s principal, Beth Silbergeld, who is Jewish, said the school was working with the Anti-Defamation League and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, a local antisemitism advocacy group, “to ensure that we receive appropriate support and guidance as we work to repair the harm that’s been done to our community.”
Silbergeld told J. that she felt pressure to learn from the incident.
“I’ve been in education for a long time and have seen, sadly, lots of incidences of oppression and hate toward many groups,” she said. “I think that we always have a responsibility as schools to do what’s right and to take action and learn from the experiences of other other schools and other incidents as a way to hopefully eliminate actions like what we’ve experienced.”
The incident is not the first time Branham High School has faced controversy over antisemitism on its campus. In April, the California Department of Education ruled that the school had discriminated against its Jewish students by presenting “biased” content about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a 12th-grade ethnic literature curriculum.
It is also not the first instance of a “human swastika” roiling a school community. In 2019, nine middle schoolers in Ojai, California, also arranged themselves in a “human swastika” and faced disciplinary measures from the school.
Exactly what possessed the Branham students to do what they did is not clear. But psychologists told the J. that the teen years are a peak moment for transgressive behaviors that may or may not reflect deep-seated biases.
“It’s a developmental time where you’re doing new things, you’re trying new things, you’re making mistakes, you’re trying to fit in, you’re trying to get laughs and likes,” Ellie Pelc, director of clinical services at the Bay Area’s Jewish Family and Children’s Services, told the newspaper. “And you often do so in some hurtful or harmful ways that you don’t always have the capacity to think through in advance.”
The photo was met by condemnation by California State Sens. Scott Wiener, who wrote that antisemitism was “pervasive & growing” in a post on Facebook, and Dave Cortese, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the incident in a statement.
“What happened at Branham High School was not a joke, not a prank, and not self-expression — it was an act of hatred,” wrote San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan in a post on X. “The fact that this was planned and posted publicly makes it even more disturbing.”
By Tuesday, the uproar had sparked a response from district leaders. In a post on Facebook, Robert Bravo, the superintendent for the Campbell Union High School District, wrote that the district “will respond firmly, thoughtfully, and within the full scope allowed by Board Policy and California law.” (Displaying a Nazi swastika on the property of a school is illegal in California.)
He added that the school district considered the incident an instance of “hate violence” based on California state education code, which allows for suspension or expulsion in such cases.
“Our response cannot be limited to discipline alone,” continued Bravo. “We are committed to using this incident as an opportunity to deepen education around antisemitism, hate symbols and the historical atrocities associated with them.”
The antisemitic post comes two months after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill creating a statewide office assigned to combatting antisemitism in California public schools. The office, which is the first of its kind in the country, was met with praise from local Jewish advocacy groups while some critics warned it could chill academic freedoms.
Marc Levine, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in the Central Pacific region, called the incident “repulsive and unacceptable” in a statement on X. The incident was also condemned by the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, which wrote in a statement that it had been working with the school about “how to ensure an effective response.”
The Bay Area Jewish Coalition also issued a statement on Tuesday, writing that the antisemitic act had “shaken Jewish families across Northern California and beyond.”
“We hope that what happened at Branham serves as a wake-up call for California and for the rest of the country to take the antisemitism crisis seriously and reverse the trend through real, meaningful action and long-term change,” the statement continued.
The post High schoolers’ ‘human swastika’ on football field shakes San Jose Jewish community appeared first on The Forward.