It is through a chance connection with a patient, a Holocaust survivor, that Dr. Brown decides that finding a way for Delia to become a Bat Mitzvah is meaningful and worth struggling for. One of the most interesting popular culture Bat Mitzvahs is certainly Grace in Joan of Arcadia (2003-2005). Grace is a whip-smart independent thinker who defies every stereotype about Jewish girlhood. After refusing to become Bat Mitzvah at the age of 13, much to the chagrin of her Rabbi father, she decides to go through with it at age 16. In episode 10 of season 2, Grace tells her best friend Joan: “It was a political thing and a daughter of the Rabbi thing . . . one last empty ritual and then I'm out of here. Then, when you handed me the Torah, it hit me. This is a genius way of attacking adulthood, this religion. There's no easy answers here. It's basically a book of questions . . . and I hope I'm up for it.”
There is an enormous amount of information for and about Bat Mitzvahs on the Internet. Roughly thirty to forty groups directly relating to Bat Mitzvah celebrations are found on the social networking site Facebook; these groups are devoted to anticipating upcoming Bat Mitzvah celebrations (“If you are counting down the days until Emily's Bat Mitzvah”), reminiscing about those past (“Maddie's Bat Mitzvah was amazing”), and discussing silly facts or memories (“The majority of my pajamas I got at a Bar or Bat Mitzvah when I was 13”). There are also dozens of blogs by girls and their parents counting down to Bat Mitzvah celebrations. Searching online, one can hire a Rabbi or Cantor, sign up for Hebrew lessons, find (or register for) gifts, and rent a hall, band, or photographer. Many of these consumer sites specialize particularly in the Bat or Bar Mitzvah scene.
A popular Web site entitled “Bar Mitzvah Disco” launched a campaign encouraging people who became Bar and Bat Mitzvah in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to send in pictures from their special day. The response was so overwhelming that the creators expanded the Web site, published a book, and are making a movie, all of which chronicle the festivities (in this case, quite dated) of this rite of passage in a forum that allows for both humor and critique.
