Another part of my friends' bat mitzvah Torah was Lech Lecha. She told me that this part told the story of how God spoke to Abraham, telling him that he should go to his homeland, Canaan. Abraham arrives in Canaan, where he then builds an altar to continue spreading the message that there is only one God. As he arrives in Canaan, a famine occurs and forces Abraham to leave his homeland for Egypt, becoming the first Jewish man to do so. Unwilling to leave, his wife convinced him to do so for his own sake and that of his family. When Lexi read this story, she immediately thought of a perfect situation that connected her personal life with this one. When she was about to enter high school, her family decided to move from one town in New Jersey to another, forcing her to change schools. It was a little overwhelming for her, but the only thing that made her happy was being able to join a sports team since her old school didn't have many. By the first week of school, Lexi joined the cheerleading team and was happier than ever. After a few months, she knew she had a back problem and was still in pain. After several visits to the doctor, she was told she should give up cheerleading and try to find another sport that would be less harmful to her back. . Even though she didn't want to, Lexi listened to doctor's orders and her parents' advice and became a member of the school tennis team. The moral that Lexi took from her Torah portion, and what is easy to see in her story, is to do what is best for yourself, with the help of those close to you. Lexi never wanted to change teams because her passion always came from cheerleading, but knowing it would affect her... middle of paper ... community and storytelling within the celebration. I learned what goes on behind the scenes of bar and bat mitzvah service and what you can honestly learn from services if you pay deep attention. If I hadn't had the experience of sitting with these five girls, I would have always thought that bar and bat mitzvahs were about partying and celebrating. From my experience listening to them, I learned that bat mitzvahs are also about telling stories and learning from the past. These stories were passed down centuries ago and teach us a lesson from our ancestors that we could never have learned without the Torah. I can now, from my experience, say that there should be a new definition of bar and bat mitzvah in the dictionary: the celebration of storytelling through the eyes of the bat (bar) mitzvah and the Torah..