Judith Kaplan Eisenstein
An editor has nominated this article for deletion. You are welcome to participate in the deletion discussion, which will decide whether or not to retain it. |
Born on Sept. 10 1909, Judith Kaplan was the first woman to celebrate a Bat Mitzvah publicly on March 18, 1922[1]. The oldest daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism. It was the first time that a woman led the congregation[2].
Reflecting on her Bat Mitzvah many years later she said: "No thunder sounded. No lightning struck."[3] Bat mitzvah ceremonies are now commonplace within the Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist branches of Judaism. At the age of 82, she had a second Bat Mitzvah. Various feminist and Jewish leaders, including Betty Friedan, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Ruth W. Messinger, and Elizabeth Holtzman[3] 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, inclu[4]ding the popular "What Is Torah," with her husband, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein whom she married in 1934. 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, Md[3]. Her papers are included in the Ira and Judith Kaplan Eisenstein Reconstructionist Archives of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College