<div dir="ltr">It really does not matter whether or not the transition to adulthood is something to celebrate. A seudas mitzvah is specifically to honor one's accomplishments and one's significant choices and to celebrate the good that has been done for the person and for the Jewish people. A bar or bat mitzvah has yet to accomplish anything other than become old enough to start making choices and searching for the opportunity for achievement. As was said before, celebration by itself is more like a seudas hodaah, or simply a happy occasion.<br>
<br>Reform and Conservative Jews in America glorify the bar mitzvah because the children are practically expected to abandon religion at the age when their parents can no longer force it on them, so a big deal is made of the "committment" of the children to accept communal and religious responsibility for the future, even after they leave the Hebrew School... That's probably how the custom of children reading the Torah for their bar mitzvah became popular.<br>
<br>Perhaps this is why even we Orthodox borrow this practice, because its always worth impressing upon our kids the importance of accepting responsibility of Torah willingly and yet with a sense of duty, so that bar mitzvah is about personal pride and committment, and not just about being liable for punishment and having to run the gauntet of adolescence.<br>
<br>Many bar mitvah boys complete sedarim of mishnayos for their bar mitvah or something similar as well. Many young ladies prepare explanations of the parsha or share insights about their favorite Biblical heroine or Torah passage pertaining to women, etc (hopefully not their parent or teacher's insights--we should encourage kids to do some original thinking for their bar/bat mitzvah. Probably then it is a seudas mitzvah...
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