Photo by Bill Green Congregation Kol Ami members from left are Jennifer Mykytyn, Karen Young, Julie Heifetz and Rabbi Dan Sikowitz.

"We were first generation (American Jews) when it was 'not cool,' to be Jewish," she said "There were no prayer markers on the door, nothing that called attention to Jewishness."

Her family attended a temple that reminds her, looking back, of Protestant services, complete with organ and choir situated in a rear loft. Little Hebrew was spoken and the rabbi did not wear a robe.

"Very much an assimilated practice," said Heifetz.

But she did have one very observant grandfather. Arriving in the United States in the late 1800s, Joe Waltuch, an Austrian immigrant, lived on a reservation in Broken Bow, Okla., for 26 years, selling dry goods to American Indians before moving his family and school-age children to nearby Missouri.

"He was such a joyous person, always seeing the best in every person," Heifetz said. "He didn't leave the reservation because he was unhappy -- he loved it there -- he just didn't think his children would receive a good education."

At her bat mitzvah ceremony last Saturday at Congregation Kol Ami in Frederick, Heifetz wore her grandfather's morning prayer shawl. Like most Jewish women, Heifetz was not given the opportunity 50 years ago to become bat mitzvah -- considered the passage into adulthood and religious life -- at the traditional age of 13.

"I never learned anything about Judaism from him," Heifetz said, explaining her reason for becoming bat mitzvah in her 60s. "But I wanted to be more like him. I wanted to claim that understanding of Judaism that he had, that joy and spirituality."

A former writer in residence at the St. Louis Center for Holocaust Studies, Heifetz recalls stories of her grandfather bringing bagels and lox from buying trips to share with his customers.

"I tell people my grandfather spoke English the same as he spoke Choctaw -- with a Yiddish accent."

Although the reasons vary for going through the rigorous bat mitzvah preparation, learning to read Hebrew and studying the Torah, more women later in life are participating in adult bat mitzvah ceremonies across the United States, said Rabbi Dan Sikowitz, of Kol Ami Congregation.

"It's unusual, but it's not rare anymore," he said. "These women didn't have the chance. In more traditional congregations, it was just not traditional, since girls were not regarded to have to do the commandments."

There are 613 commandments in Judaism, Sikowitz said, not just 10, including learning the Torah, memorizing prayers and blessings for the dead, lighting candles in the sanctuary, and keeping a kosher kitchen.

Sikowitz added the eldest daughter of a New York rabbi -- Judith Kaplan Eisenstein -- was the first woman in the 1920s to become bat mitzvah in the U.S.

Joining Heifetz in becoming bat mitzvah Saturday were Frederick Alderwoman Karen Young and Jennifer Mykytyn, former vice president of Junior Achievement of Central Maryland.

Both women, like Heifetz, are decades past the traditional age. Each had her own reasons for going through the process, but all three said they thought the best thing about it was the friendship they formed.

"I think it's always something I've been interested in," said Young, who grew up in a secular household in Montoursville, Pa. "Mainly, it was an intellectual pursuit. The knowledge and experience is something I've always wanted to have."

She also mentioned as part of her D'var Torah, a mini-sermon each bat mitzvah gives, that she hoped her effort may serve as a model down the road for her younger sister who has a 15-month-old child.

"That was central to my message," said Young, who credited Sikowitz's flexibility in working with women with still very busy lives, during almost two years of biweekly, then weekly classes. "I take a very holistic approach to Judaism. The chance to do this was about spirituality, but also about maintaining the Jewish heritage."

For Mykytyn, becoming bat mitzvah "was probably about many things."

"I've been thinking about this for a while," she said. "I was afraid, for one, about learning to read Hebrew, which has different symbols. It's not like learning another language with our same alphabet -- and I was worried about learning the Torah, which doesn't have vowels."

Ultimately, it was her son's accidental death in early 2008, that moved her to finally act.

Two years before, Mykytyn, who is not from Frederick, had joined the Kol Ami congregation. Sikowitz had been instrumental in helping her and her husband through the arrangements and grief after they lost their son, she said.

"He walked us through it," Mykytyn said. After that experience, she said, bat mitzvah "seemed like the next step."

Mykytyn said both her parents were Jewish, but like Heifetz, added that growing up in the '50s, being Jewish was "not cool."

"You gain your own fortitude, however, when you get older," she said. "For some, I think, too, you get closer to some sort of spirituality when you get older."

Mykytyn laughed, adding that she also wanted to get out the "cobwebs," by proving she could learn the material. And she said she wanted to show her other son something.

"I wanted him to see how I was embracing Judaism," she said.