This article was produced as part of the New York Jewish Week’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around New York City to report on issues that affect their lives.

I’m sitting at the dining room table doing my Spanish homework while my mother sits across from me, tackling a daunting task: studying for her bat mitzvah. This scene is part of our weekly routine in our Lower East Side apartment in Manhattan. Like every other Thursday for the past few months, my mom has just come home from her bat mitzvah preparation class with work to review. 

In most Jewish families, parents take on the role of assisting their children in b’nai mitzvah prep; in my case, I delayed completing my Spanish assignment to tutor my mom.

Often, when explaining that my 52-year-old mom is having a bat mitzvah in June, people assume she is a convert to Judaism; others suggest she might be reaffirming her Judaism by having a second bat mitzvah. I’ve even heard some ponder whether my mom wasn’t afforded such an opportunity due to her gender. 

While these are not bad guesses — and happen to be true for many in my mom’s b’nai mitzvah prep class at Central Synagogue, a Reform temple in Manhattan — her explanation is entirely different. 

As Soviet immigrants to the United States in the late ’70s, my mother’s family had to learn to be American before they could even begin to understand what it meant to be Jewish. When my mom, Ella, left the Soviet Union at six years old with her family in pursuit of freedom and a better way of life, she was pressured to assimilate. As a result, she lost touch with her Judaism, and it became secondary to her American identity. It wasn’t until after college that connecting with Jewish culture and learning about its traditions took on greater significance.

It took my mom decades to realize that the next step in her Jewish journey was to have a bat mitzvah. After guiding my sister and me through the process, my mom approached our congregation’s clergy and asked what it would take for her to have a bat  mitzvah of her own. 

“I always enjoyed the customs of Jewish life, especially here at Central Synagogue. Attending Shabbat services and the High........

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