This summer, my family packed our bags and flew to America. We weren’t just going for a vacation. We had one very important stop to make. The whole trip was built around celebrating our niece’s Bat Mitzvah. A Bat Mitzvah is when a Jewish girl turns twelve and officially takes on the responsibilities of adulthood. Boys have a Bar Mitzvah at thirteen. Every family celebrates in their own way. Boys typically read from the Torah, while in Orthodox settings girls might lead a prayer or take on another role to show that something has shifted, they’re no longer just kids. It’s an exciting time, a meaningful moment that marks growing up in a real way. Suddenly you’re accountable for things you weren’t before. And it made me wonder: what exactly does accountability look like? Where is that line between childhood freedom and adult responsibility?
The Bible gives us more than one kind of accountability. There is responsibility for doing the good we are commanded to do – mitzvot aseh, the positive commandments. There is responsibility for refraining from harmful actions. And there is responsibility after mistakes, what happens when we fail, and how we respond in the moment after. One of the clearest examples of the later comes in the story of Yehuda and Tamar. Tamar, Yehuda’s daughter-in-law, had been denied the chance to marry Yehuda’s third son after being widowed twice. Left vulnerable, she disguised herself as a harlot and conceived a child by Yehuda himself. When her pregnancy was discovered, she was brought out to be punished. Instead of accusing him outright, Tamar sent Yehuda the seal, cord, and staff he had given her as collateral.
At that moment, Yehuda could have denied everything. He could have saved his reputation and let her be condemned. But he didn’t. He said plainly,
“She is more righteous than I” (Genesis 38:26).
Those words were not just a confession. They were accountability. Yehuda owned his failure, admitted his responsibility, and in doing so altered the course of his life and his descendants. From that moment of truth came the line that would eventually lead to King David.
If Yehuda shows us the power of accountability after a mistake, the episode of Pesach Sheni, the second Passover shows us accountability in a different light: the determination to do right even when circumstances block the way. In the Book of Numbers, certain Israelites were unable to bring the Passover offering because they were ritually impure. They could have accepted exclusion. Instead, they came to Moses and cried out,
“Why should we be kept back, so that we may not offer the offering of the Lord in its appointed season?” (Numbers 9:7).
God answers by giving them another chance, a second Passover, one month later.
Here, accountability is not about guilt but about persistence. These men refused to let their condition excuse them from responsibility. They demanded the opportunity to serve, and God honored their plea. Their accountability gave birth to an entirely new mitzvah.
These two stories together paint us a bigger picture of what really matters in the Torah. Yehuda teaches that accountability means facing failure honestly, without excuses. Pesach Sheni teaches that accountability also means pressing forward, insisting that effort matters, even when obstacles stand in the way. One is about confession. The other is about perseverance.
And if we look closer, we see that the Torah is filled with stories just like these. Again and again, the text returns to this same theme: accountability is what separates collapse from growth, despair from hope, wasted opportunity from redemption.
When a Jewish child reaches the age of bar or bat mitzvah, it is the age when accountability formally begins. But in truth, the seeds are planted much earlier. Children learn to bless food long before twelve or thirteen. They learn kindness, apologies, and forgiveness in the sandbox before they ever stand at a lectern. What changes at twelve or thirteen is that now their choices carry weight before God. They are counted. They are answerable.
But answerability is not meant to crush. Accountability is not about helplessness. It is about the freedom that comes with honesty and the dignity that comes with trying again. Yehuda and Tamar remind us that facing failure with courage can change the future. Pesach Sheni reminds us that God Himself makes room for second chances when we refuse to give up.
So what does accountability look like? It looks like Yehuda saying, “She is more righteous than I,” and changing history. It looks like Israelites demanding another chance to serve, and God granting them a new festival. And it looks like the moment a twelve-year-old girl, or a thirteen-year-old boy, steps into the weight and wonder of being answerable to God. That is the true milestone of maturity – owning our failures, grasping our second chances, and living each day with the mindset that our choices matter,
