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COPING; Coming of Age, and Back to Her Faith

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: June 06, 2004

LAST week was the final stretch leading up to Dara Kessler's bat mitzvah. By some traditional lights, the event was coming half a lifetime too late. Dr. Kessler is 30, a married woman, living near Gramercy Park, with a fulfilling career as a holistic dentist, treating the whole person rather than just the mouth. The Jewish coming-of-age ceremony is supposed to take place at the more tender age of 13.

But life is not always that simple.

Dr. Kessler, who grew up in El Paso, Tex., had what she calls ''a very rigorous'' Jewish education, attending Jewish day school from kindergarten to sixth grade. But when her parents asked if she wanted a bat mitzvah, she turned down the chance. ''I'd had it with this Jewish stuff,'' Dr. Kessler recalled. ''None of it made sense.''

But two Fridays ago, she and her husband, Seth, 32, who works for an outsourcing company and had his own bar mitzvah at the normal age, could be found at a Torah study session that their synagogue, the Shul of New York, holds at a Hispanic cultural center on the Lower East Side.

With nine other people -- friends and fellow members of the congregation -- they sat in a semicircle facing the rabbi, Burt Aaron Siegel, who, in his billowy white trousers, two votive candles flickering on a table behind him, looked more like an Indian mystic than a rabbi. The impression was not altogether wrong. Rabbi Burt, as he is called, was the senior rabbi of the Riverdale Temple 25 years ago, before turning psychotherapist, explorer of the spiritual universe and Kundalini yoga teacher.

Rabbi Burt mentioned that Dr. Kessler was among nine women (none of the others were present that night) studying for a group bat mitzvah. After a homily about unconditional love, the rabbi ended the session by chanting the word ''Shalom'' again and again, stretching out the last syllable so it sounded like the Ommm at the end of a yoga session. Then it was off to Dr. Kessler's apartment for Sabbath dinner, the rabbi in tow.

Over a vegetarian spread of pita, eggplant and tahini, Dr. Kessler said that she now realized she had been getting mixed messages from her parents. Her mother came from a Christian background and converted to Judaism, and her father had never had a bar mitzvah, a fact she learned only recently. Her younger brother did have a bar mitzvah, and she thinks her parents' giving her a choice about whether to have a bat mitzvah reflected the still prevalent view that the ritual was less important for girls.

Dr. Kessler had been searching for a way back to her faith for some time, visiting various synagogues. But she and her husband, who have been married almost five years, couldn't agree on the proper setting. ''I wanted the female energy to be respected,'' she said. Yet they didn't want a place that seemed wacky. The shul seemed to offer a balance.

Her spiritual journey intensified last summer when she began thinking about having children. In that spirit, she and her husband were trying to do more ''wonderful things.'' They went on trips. Dr. Kessler started a book club. And she decided to have the bat mitzvah, the feminine coming-of-age ritual that she had missed the first time around.

Dr. Kessler's bat mitzvah was yesterday, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts, a former synagogue on Norfolk Street that is now the home of her shul and the arts foundation. Her parents are divorced, but her mother flew up from El Paso for the occasion. Dr. Kessler was going to talk about the role of women in religion through the character of Miriam in the story of Exodus. ''Miriam's Song,'' a modern-day composition, would be sung by the daughter of one of the other women who was being bat mitzvahed.

E-mail: amh@nytimes.com