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Podcast: North Star with Ellin Bessner
Episode: This 80-year-old Montrealer just celebrated her bat mitzvah for the first time
Description: Ruth Cooperstock had just turned 80 years old when she became the oldest Canadian woman to ever have a bat miztvah. The celebration wasn't common for girls in 1950s Winnipeg, where Cooperstock grew up; but this year, she was determined to make up for lost time.
Cooperstock first studied on her own, then with an adult b'nai mitzvah class class at Congregation Dorshei Emet, as part of the Reconstructionist movement’s program marking the 100th anniversary of the first bat mitzvah in North America. Despite losing her voice for four months and working with a speech therapist to ge...