Bar and Bat Mitzvah to the event. However, this does not delay the onset of rights and responsibilities of being a Jewish adult which comes about strictly by virtue of age. The obligation to lay tefillin begins when a boy reaches bar mitzvah age. The common custom is for the bar mitzvah boy to begin putting on tefillin one to three months before his bar mitzvah. This way, by the time he is obligated in the commandment, he will already know how to fulfill it properly. The first mention of a party associated with a synagogue bar mitzvah was in the 13th century, so
Bar and Bat Mitzvah to maintain the rule that it was a smaller celebration than a wedding. Bar and bat mitzvah parties in America are often lavish affairs held at hotels and country clubs with hundreds of guests. The trend has been mocked, most notably in the movie "Keeping Up with the Steins". In the 1950s, Rabbi Harold Saperstein of New York described them as too often being "more bar than mitzvah". Rabbi Shmuley Boteach says that over-the-top bar mitzvah parties were already common when he was growing up in Miami in the 1970s. In 1979, the Responsa Committee of the Central Conference of