Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber
Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue
Saturday 10 October 2026 – bat mitzvah of Abi

• וַתִּקַּח מִפִּרְיוֹ וַתֹּאכַל וַתִּתֵּן גַּם לְאִישָׁהּ עִמָּהּ וַיֹּאכַל: She took one of its fruits and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate too.¹
• But what fruit was it? If anyone says ‘apple’, I’m going to sound one of those loud QI-style klaxons to show that you’ve made a schoolboy error. Professor Azzan Yadin-Israel has written a whole book² about why that’s the wrong answer derived from Christian exegetes.
• In the Jewish tradition, Rabbi Meir says it was wheat.³ Rabbi Abba of Acco says it was an etrog.⁴ Rabbi Yosi says it was a fig.⁵ Rabbi Yehoshua ben-Levi said that we shouldn’t be speculating because God meant it to be a big secret.⁶
• The Jews of 16th-century Syria and Egypt understood the forbidden fruit to have been a banana.⁷ That would explain how Adam and Eve slipped up.
• But my favourite theory is that of Rav Zalman Sorotzkin. He says⁸ that it was the grape. God’s intention was that Adam and Eve would have used that first bunch of grapes to make wine for kiddush at the first Shabbat. Thereafter, grapes would have been permitted for general snacking, but they were to be used for a holy purpose first. So Adam and Eve’s disobedience was that they jumped the gun, and ate something that they would have been allowed to eat had they just waited 12 hours or so.
• For Jewish girls and women throughout much of our people’s history, bat mitzvah was itself a forbidden fruit. Something that they wanted, could look at from afar, but were never allowed to have. The first bat mitzvah girl was Judith Kaplan in 1922.⁹ When she grew up, she became an expert in Jewish music, with a particular focus on engaging young people. In the introduction to one of her songbooks, she expressed a hope that:¹⁰

• Abi, you’ve definitely done that, and you’ve shown us this morning just what a deep and happy association you’ve built up with Judaism. When you wrote to me ahead of today, you said that, for you, bat mitzvah means “moving on to the next step in life”. And, whether or not you realise it, you took up the same theme in your beautiful d’var Torah, remarking on how Creation proceeded in an orderly and rational way from day one to day six.
• Your own journey to bat mitzvah has been orderly. It’s been a slog, I know that, but that’s because you’ve gone about it with such care and intentionality. You haven’t talked about skipping straight to the party, or about the presents you’re expecting, or even about your birthday itself. You’ve focussed on learning your portion – and how wonderfully you read it – and preparing for the service. And of course Jess has set you an excellent example of how to remain involved in synagogue life after bat mitzvah!
• In other words, you’ve waited for your grapes. You’ve taken part in six days of work, and now that you’ve finished your bat mitzvah, you’ve earned your kiddush wine, not that that’s much of a treat.
• More significantly, though, you’ve earned two more things. Firstly, entry to the adult contingent of the Jewish people (hello!) – and secondly, and probably most welcome of all, a rest. We wish you מזל טוב.

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Shavua tov!

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Notes

1. Genesis 3:6. ↩︎
2. Azzan Yadin-Israel, Temptation Transformed: the story of how the forbidden fruit became an apple (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022). ↩︎
3. Genesis Rabbah 15:7. ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. Ibid. ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. Lonzano’s Ma’arich sv ‘Ma’us’. See also Pirkei Moshe 20:88, trans Rabbi Natan ha-Me’ati, in which Maimonides warns that bananas (a) were the forbidden fruit, and (b) block the arteries “with their sweetness and stickiness”. ↩︎
8. Oznayim la-Torah to, interestingly enough, Deuteronomy 20:19. ↩︎
9. Judy Rudoren, “What would Judy do? 100 years after first bat mitzvah, a meditation on female firsthood“, Forward (18 March 2022). ↩︎
10. Judith Eisenstein and Frieda Prensky, Songs of Childhood (United Synagogue Commission on Jewish Education, 1955) @xxii. ↩︎