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 the minyan" ceremony, in which boys of thirteen and girls of twelve recited a blessing) since the mid-19th century. There were also bat mitzvah rituals held in the 19th century in Iraq. All this may have influenced the American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, who held the first public celebration of a bat mitzvah in the United States, for his daughter Judith, on March 18, 1922, at the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, his synagogue in New York City. Judith Kaplan recited the preliminary blessing, read a portion of that week's Torah portion in Hebrew and English, and then intoned