We have a different theology, a different liturgy, a different holiday cycle, and a different life cycle. But Jews and Christians share certain things, and that sharing is no less profound than the differences. We both believe in a God that can be approached through prayer and worship. We believe in a God who loves and who is revealed through Scripture and holy interventions in history. Jews and Christians also share a belief in the power of ritual.
Rituals make a group distinctive and transmit identity from generation to generation.
They dramatize a religious group's beliefs about the world and about how God interacts with it. It is one of the most venerable and most potent of Jewish symbols and rituals. When a Jewish child becomes bar or bat mitzvah, he or she publicly reads a section from the Torah, the Five Books of Moses. Each week, every congregation in the Jewish world reads the identical passage. The bar and bat mitzvah ceremony occurs during the Sabbath worship service.