The girl in the Moroccan and Jewish code: minor or major?

This article was automatically translated from HIBAPRESS, the Arabic version:

HIBAPRESS-RABAT

In the new Moudawana, regarding the controversial issue of marriage of minor girls, it was clarified that the legal age of marriage is now set at 18 years, with an exception authorizing marriage at 17 years, subject to fulfilling strict conditions guaranteeing the protection of young people, and strengthening judicial control to ensure that this exception is only used in necessary cases.

It is now possible to record engagements. The new amendments ensure the consolidation of marriage guarantees for persons with disabilities, by revising the formal and administrative procedures required for the establishment of the marriage certificate.

For the Jewish code, the girl has a status quite different from the boy because if the age of 12 years and one day gives her the status of an adult, the transition to adulthood for girls has never given rise to a ceremony. particular in history.

The expression bat mitzvah appears only once in the Talmud (30) regarding the age when the girl is subject to the obligations of Jewish Law in the same way as adults. Thus, the Talmud stipulates that the Yom Kippur fast is incumbent on the boy aged 13 and over and on the girl aged twelve (31).

In the 19th century, some indications of public recognition of the change in status of the girl are attested, mainly in Western and Eastern Europe, in Italy, in Egypt as well as in Baghdad. But it is undeniably under the influence of Christianity, on the one hand, and the emergence of liberal and feminist movements, on the other, that the bat mitzvah has become the feminine version of the bar mitzvah. Particularly since the end of the 20th century, the bat mitzvah in a liberal environment has taken on all its aspects (public reading of the Torah by the girl in the synagogue, wearing of the tallit and sometimes phylacteries). In a traditionalist or Orthodox environment, on the other hand, we are content to celebrate the event in private to encourage the young girl to be discreet, or possibly with a speech given in front of members of the community. Today, liberals and Orthodox around the world agree that even if the bat mitzvah ceremony has no serious scriptural or historical basis, it is an opportunity to encourage the Jewish education of girls, to empower them and stimulate them to study and transmit the rites of Judaism.