Question: bar/bat/? mitzvah in modern times

2022-01-24T03:49:29Z

I'm asking about words, not observances or concepts.

When a Jewish boy comes of age, he becomes obligated in the commandments, bar mitzvah. Usually the occasion is marked in the synagogue, which is also called a bar mitzvah. When a Jewish girl comes of age, she becomes obligated in the commandments, bat mitzvah, and she might have a bat mitzvah in the synagogue.

These terms are from the talmud. The word bar literally means "son of" (in Aramaic). The word bat literally means "daughter of". One might also see the term b'nei mitzvah, which is plural, when more than one person is marking the occasion in the same service. The word b'nei is unambiguously plural in Hebrew, unlike the sometimes-numerically-ambiguous "they" in English.

Hebrew is a gendered language; there is no neuter term like "child" in English.

What term are people using for nonbinary or genderfluid people? This is going to come up in my synagogue, and it must have already come up in others, but I don't know what they did. I have some readers who might know: what are people using instead of bar or bat?

While the talmud recognizes four genders, I don't think its conclusions about the other two are going to satisfy most modern people.

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debugging a toy

2017-07-03T01:31:14Z

The detective work and presentation in the top answer to this question on English Language & Usage are quite impressive. What is that picture of a word beginning with "Y" supposed to be?

I haven't read all the comments, but it appears there's a lot of forensics to be found therein, too.

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Monica

Question: bar/bat/? mitzvah in modern times

debugging a toy