[Avodah] bat mitzva "bo bayom"

[Micha Berger]

The mishnah in Bameh Madliqin lists three mitzvos, which arguably
implies that they hold a unique concept of Jewish womanhood. Of them,
only hafrashas challah is appropriate, unless the party is Friday night
and the girl bentches licht herself.

I share R Prof YL's father-in-law's discomfort with spiritual
engineering. It seems somewhere betweeen "locheish al hamakah"
and "al menas leqabeil peras". (In The Lonely Man of Faith, RYBS
comments on the ad campaign that went "A family that prays together,
stays together." It's a testimony to the loss of Adam II (man seeking
redemption through community) that prayer needs to be sold in functional
terms, "what else can it get me?" The whole thing is very Adam I (umil'u
es ha'aretz vekivshuha), using religion not as an end in itself, but as
a way to control something.)

One of thse magickal formulae is hafrashas challah. Such as pooling women
together to get a shiur for a berakhah. There is the same good reason why
women found this one -- nidah and hadlaqas haneir can't be done on demand.

For similar reasons, I could see making hafrashas challah, when baking
enough for it to be deOraisa, to be a sane choice for a bas mitzvah
ritual.

Of course, given non-O Jews and their ritual committees, O is loathe to
think in terms of crafting rituals. We simply let them evolve and then
think they're miSinai. (If you want to get rid of bas mitzvah because
of its Reconstructionist heritage, you would also have to get rid of
the shabbos morning derashah, borrowed from the Lutherans by German R.)


While on the topic... Why are L the only ones who really push chinukh WRT
hadlaqas haneir?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "I think, therefore I am." - Renne Descartes
micha at aishdas.org        "I am thought about, therefore I am -
http://www.aishdas.org   my existence depends upon the thought of a
Fax: (270) 514-1507      Supreme Being Who thinks me." - R' SR Hirsch