When her mother first offered her the option of attending Hebrew school, Leah Lucid ’10 declined, feeling that it just wouldn’t have meant much to her. Now, seven years after her 13th birthday, Lucid was just Bat Mitzvah’d at Wesleyan, through the Jewish Community’s B’nei Mitzvah program.

“I think it has been a lot more meaningful to me to do it now—at age 20—when I’m actually transitioning into adulthood,” she said. “13 year olds are no longer adults in our society—we don’t get married and start families that young anymore! So it makes a lot of sense to me to do this now.”

Started less than a decade ago by a student member of the University Jewish community, the B’nei Mitzvah program has provided a means for students newly interested in their heritage to explore their Judaism.

This past Saturday morning, in Beckham Hall, Hannah Masius ’10, Leah Lucid ’10 and Alex Hartley ’10 were each Bat Mitzvah’d. The three led the Saturday morning Torah service in Hebrew and gave speeches.

“Beautiful, fun, joyous, the ceremony literally moved me to tears and I don’t think it could have gone better,” Masius said. “There was just so much love in the room.”

Hartley and Lucid emphasized the importance of a sense of connectedness with others during the ceremony.

“It was so great to have everyone in the community and people I love from out of town be a part of the service,” Lucid said. “We had the help of family and friends who came up for various honors during the service, which made the experience even more meaningful.”

Hartley noted that the process is no less stressful for 20 year olds then it is in middle school.

“The ceremony was wonderful, yet anxiety provoking at the same time,” Hartley said. “It made it a lot less scary to have Hannah and Leah going through the process with me.”

Masius began considering re-examining her Jewish heritage while working in Alaska, where she met a conservative Jew from Texas who had not celebrated Shabbat services the entire time he was in Alaska.

“The next week I celebrated with him,” she said. “It planted the thought in my head of what it means to be in a community. That, on top of coming back to this place and after a little bit of struggle,being able to find my voice through friends and the Jewish community. It became a celebration of me coming into myself, encompassing everything that had happened in my life thus far and where I wanted to take it.”

The presence of the Jewish community on campus also played a significant role in Hartley’s decision to pursue the B’nei Mitzvah program.

“I decided to do the B’nei Mitzvah program this past fall after people found out that I hadn’t had a Bat Mitzvah and started asking me non-stop if I wanted to it,” she said. “My mom is Jewish and my dad is Christian, but my family is not religious, so the issue didn’t come up when I was younger. Last fall was the first time I ever really considered the possibility.”

Sydney Berkman ’10, Adina Teibloom ’10 and Samuel Kachuck ’10 helped organize the program this year, which involved interviewing possible candidates, finding them tutors (or tutoring them themselves), creating a class schedule, and generally coordinating the details from the services to the meals to the party.

Kachuck noted that it was not only the students undergoing the ceremony who felt profoundly affected by the bonds formed in the preparation process.

“The three of us coordinators sort of felt like parents, although all three of the students had their parents actually there, watching the product of so much effort,” Kachuck said. “Needless to say, we were prepared with tissues. It went better than I could have imagined, and I look forward to taking part in it again next year.”

After studying Hebrew and discussing their reasons for undergoing the process with their tutors, the three students would meet each week with student teachers in order to discuss a different facet of Judaism, ranging from Jewish Holidays to Feminism in Judaism.

“These student forums provided comfortable, safe places to ask questions and discuss our thoughts without fear of judgment,” Lucid said.

Hartley was similarly enthusiastic.

“It was really wonderful to have an opportunity to learn from anyone in the community who wanted to teach,” she said. “I didn’t realize how diverse the beliefs of the Wesleyan Jewish community were until I took classes taught by students who had very different opinions.”

Students also had to examine their own motivation for joining the program.

“That’s a huge part of the process, figuring out why you’re even doing it,” Berkman said. “That’s the struggle we want participants to have. If they don’t think about why they’re doing it, they’re not thinking about it enough.”

Self-reflection on the part of the students does not end with the ceremony.

“I see it as a marker in the shaping of my adult life by having that impact of showing the world that I know what I want and will go after it,” Masius said. “That I have found my voice. That I am always on a journey, but I feel so much more confident about the unknown.”

Hartley and Lucid expressed similar sentiments.

“I have begun the lifelong process of figuring out what part Judaism will take in my life, and have found ways to connect things that I’ve already done to my Jewish heritage,” Lucid said. “I have also met such great people in the process.”

“I think that I have grown from this experience, but I’m still figuring out how,” added Hartley. “It has given me a wonderful chance to become a bigger part of the Jewish community here and get to know some amazing people.”