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Judith Kaplan Eisenstein's bat mitzvah was perhaps the most publicized, but it was not the first. While researching the history of Jewish synagogues and communities in the Midwest for my dissertation, I interviewed a woman named Ida Blum, who lived in Calumet, Michigan. She had been born in 1908, and reported that she had been tutored by her father and read a part of the parshah in the synagogue at her bat mitzvah. She would have been 12 1/2 or 13 in 1920 or 1921 which puts her earlier than Judith Kaplan's. I still have my notes of the telephone interview from 1985 but have never published anything about the event. Rochelle Berger Elstein, Ph.D. Collection Management Northwestern University Library Evanston, IL 60208-2300 http://www.library.nwu.edu/collmgmt/elstein/index.html
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