Traditional bar mitzvah for most Israelis

Some 90 percent of boys celebrating their bar mitzvah in Israel will have the traditional ceremony.

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Some 90 percent of Israeli boys celebrating their bar mitzvah will have a traditional ceremony, a poll found.

Traditional ceremony in the Ynet-Gesher poll meant the bar mitzvah would read from the Torah and put on tefillin.

Seventy-nine percent of secular parents interviewed said they would have the traditional rite, compared to 100 percent of those who identified as religiously observant.

Sixty-five percent of respondents overall would hold the ceremony at an Orthodox synagogue and 26 percent at the Western Wall.

The poll interviewed 500 Hebrew-speaking, Jewish respondents.

When questioned about a bat mitzvah, 33 percent of the respondents said some sort of spiritual context should be included, while 28 percent said they would hold a party in a social hall. Thirty percent said “there is no need to make a big deal of it.”

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