ABSTRACT
On the day of my daughter's Bat Mitzvah, I tried, in a small way, to redress a large injustice. My Aunt Harriet, although a synagogue-goer all her life, had never had an aliyah, the honor of being called up to the Torah. In her Conservative congregation on Long Island, after twenty years of discussion, women had still only arrived at the opportunity to open the doors of the Ark. But, in my egalitarian congregation in Vermont, where the Bat Mitzvah was taking place, women have the same opportunities as men. And so, I offered my favorite aunt her first, and given her seventy-something age and how slow her synagogue was moving, probably her only, moment of being called up for honor before a congregation.
