Bat Mitzvah Dress
notes: label: Description
content: Sarah Leavitt’s Bat Mitzvah, Madison, Wisconsin, 1983
label: Description
content: Religious communities have long played a role in defining the transition from girlhood to womanhood with rites of passage. Yet, girls take on these traditions and remake them in different ways.
label: Description
content: In the synagogue, a thirteen-year-old boy becomes a man at his Bar Mitzvah. But no comparable ceremony sanctified girls’ coming of age until 1922, when a New York rabbi invented Bat Mitzvah for his daughter. By the late 1900s, Jewish girls had claimed the millennia-old ritual known as the Bar Mitzvah for themselves.
label: Description
content: Sarah Leavitt grew up in Madison, where she celebrated her Bat Mitzvah at Temple Beth El. Both the boys and girls in her class took on the responsibilities of being a Jewish adult at age 13. However, the girls did not wear the traditional prayer shawl (tallit) or head covering, (yarmulke) that were still, then, only worn by the boys.
label: Description
content: Bat Mitzvah’s often meant a new dress and a party. Reminiscent of Victorian romance, this Gunne Sax dress was all the rage in the early 1980s.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Work
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2018.0254.1
label: accession number
content: 2018.0254
label: catalog number
content: 2018.0254.1
objectType: label: Object Name
content: dress
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: textile (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall, flat: 88 cm x 65 cm x 1 cm; 34 21/32 in x 25 19/32 in x 13/32 in
label: Measurements
content: overall, mounted: 32 in x 20 in x 14 in; 81.28 cm x 50.8 cm x 35.56 cm