Is Conversion a Requirement for Bar/Bat Mitzvah?
What happens when a child born of a non-Jewish mother reaches the age of bar or bat mitzvah without a proper conversion? In the more liberal Reform and Reconstructionist movements, such a conversion is not necessary. Being raised as a Jew is sufficient and the bar/bat mitzvah can go ahead. But this lenient approach may lead to problems later when the child would not be permitted to join a more traditional synagogue or to marry someone Conservative or Orthodox. In my synagogue, I require a proper conversion, with mikveh (immersion in a ritual bath), brit (circumcision, for boys) or symbolic brit (literally, hatafat dam, or the extraction of a drop of blood), and a beit din (court) of three rabbis. Several times in my career I have had to rush down to the ocean a few months before a scheduled bar/bat mitzvah for a ritual dunking. Occasionally I have had a family protest the requirement of conversion; they tell me that being raised a Jew should be sufficient. One family angrily cancelled
