B-Mitzvah

The Role of Grandparents in Their Grandchildren’s
B-Mitzvah Experience

With the support of a Covenant Foundation Signature Grant, the Jewish Grandparents Network (JGN) is reimagining grandparents’ role in their grandchildren’s B-Mitzvah experience.

If you are a rabbi, educator, spiritual leader, philanthropist, grandparent, or parent, you too might be reimagining the B-Mitzvah experience today: What does the teen want? What is meaningful for my family? What is right for my community?

JGN held a two-afternoon virtual symposium in May 2022. Jewish spiritual leaders, educators, ritualists, grandparents, and teens from across the country explored expansively how to transform grandparents’ roles in their grandchildren’s B-Mitzvah.

This report documents the key findings and recommendations from the symposium.

  • All Activities
  • Featured
  • For Clergy & Educators
  • For Grandparents

B-Mitzvah Family Text Discussion Cards

18 text discussion cards prompt B-Mitzvah teens and their families to relate thought-provoking texts from the Jewish tradition to their own lives.

Get Cooking with Your B-Mitzvah-Age Grandchild

Listen to what’s on your B-Mitzvah grandchild’s mind as you cook together.

Grandparents Are Now Part of a National B–Mitzvah Family Education Program

Moving Traditions B-Mitzvah curriculum weaves in grandparents as integral to the family experience.

Music, Movement, and Dance: Grandparents and Elders’ Roles in the B-Mitzvah Rite of Passage

Music, movement, and dance are core ingredients in transforming B-mitzvah into a vibrant celebration.

How Grandparents Can Embrace and Affirm B-Mitzvah Grandchildren’s Many Identities

For nonbinary, transgender, or gender-expansive teens, grandparents can celebrate grandchildren in ways that honor who they are.

Mitzvah Project Partners — Grandchildren and Grandparents

When a teen grandchild collaborates with a grandparent on a mitzvah project, they can share their most important values.

Traveling with Your B-Mitzvah Grandchild

A skip-gen trip, especially to Israel, can be a peak B-Mitzvah experience for you and your grandchild.

Pulling Back the Turban

What the Sikh Turban-Tying ceremony can teach us about B-Mitzvah

How to Talk with Your Grandchild about Becoming B-Mitzvah

3 strategies for having significant pre- and post- B-Mitzvah conversations with your grandchild

How Your Grandchild’s B-Mitzvah Can Enrich Your Relationship with Your Adult Child

Steps you can take to develop and enhance your own relationship with the parents of your B-Mitzvah grandchild

B-Mitzvah for All: Creating Accessible, Inclusive, and Meaningful Experiences for Teens of All Abilities

Steps for clergy and educators to imagine what is possible for the B-Mitzvah teen with disabilities.

Still Life Tells Moving Stories — A Grandparent-Grandchild Photography Experience

Combine the memory-power of objects and the ease of photography for you and your B-Mitzvah grandchild to share parts of yourselves.

Grandparents’ Role in Their Grandchildren’s B-Mitzvah Experience

JGN held a two-afternoon virtual symposium in May 2022 in which Jewish spiritual leaders, educators, ritualists, grandparents, and teens from across the country explored expansively how to transform grandparents’ roles in their grandchildren’s B-Mitzvah. The report below documents key findings and recommendations from the symposium….

The Power of Family Objects: Passing on Stories to Your Teen Grandchild

Our closets and cabinets are filled with ordinary personal treasures — a pitcher from an aunt, a grandfather’s Kiddush cup, trinkets you collected in a foreign country, a pocket watch that no longer works. Sometimes we forget the potent family stories they hold. We have…

Writing a Forever Letter as Your Grandchild Becomes B-Mitzvah

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your grandchild is becoming B-Mitzvah. You envision them standing on the bimah, or perhaps encircled by family in a home celebration, chanting and singing and sharing the wisdom they have found in the Torah portion. At this milestone occasion, you may…

A Grandmother’s Reflection: Making the B-Mitzvah Journey with My Grandchildren

The B-Mitzvah walks across the bridge from childhood to young adulthood. It’s our Jewish way of accepting growth and inviting our teens into the community of adults. Grandparents can cross the bridge with them. We can engage with them, encourage them, and enjoy each other…

For Teens: How You Can Interview Your Grandparents

Interviewing your grandparent might be a brand-new and fun experience for you both. The conversation, if you develop it thoughtfully, may coax forgotten memories from your grandparent’s past, give you some new insights into their life, and perhaps bring the two of you even closer…