Bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah ceremonies traditionally welcome boys and girls into the Jewish faith as adults when they are 13.

But to the founders of the Reform Judaism movement, 13 was simply too young to consider someone to be an adult. So those rabbis in 19th-century Germany created something else: A confirmation ceremony to be performed later in the child's teenage years that would better represent a mature adoption of the faith.

It's a rite of passage that has been handed down over the past century-plus at Lancaster's Shaarai Shomayim Synagogue, and one that has continued resonance today.

The number of teenagers at the Reform-affiliated synagogue who continue their religious education after their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs to confirmation exceeds that at other temples across the country, Rabbi Jack Paskoff says.

In August, the Union for Reform Judaism, the national congregational arm of the Reform movement, issued a press release to announce the launch of an initiative to keep congregational youth involved in Jewish life past bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs. The release states that 50 percent of Reform teens participate in their congregations after their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, and only 20 percent remain after 10th grade.

Shaarai Shomayim routinely sees about 80 percent — last year it was 100 percent — of its teens go on to confirmation during their senior year of high school, Paskoff says.

Part of the reason for that is the fact that Lancaster County has a smaller Jewish population than many major metropolitan areas, making participation in synagogue activities a more central part of teens' Jewish identities, Paskoff says.

"I like to think also that our congregational culture is one that is very respectful of kids and very appreciative of everything that they bring," he says. For example, he says youth sit on the synagogue's committees and help plan major holiday celebrations.

Shaarai Shomayim typically holds its confirmation ceremony on the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend; the timing allows out-of-town family members to attend and avoids most high schools' proms, Paskoff says.

The teens being confirmed lead the service, but the lynchpin is that each of them writes an essay answering two questions: What had been meaningful milestones in your Jewish life up to this point, and what are you confirming?

"Because kids in are in the 12th grade, I have nothing to hold over their heads, and in some cases they are brutally honest," Paskoff says. "It creates a nice dialogue. I will allow them to be fully honest as long as they are respectful.

"(For example) kids talk about loving the congregation and being a strong part of the Jewish people but not necessarily being so sure about God," he says. "I allow kids to say that."

For Evan Smiga, 18, a freshman at Lehigh University who went through Sharaai Shomayim's confirmation last year, his essay centers around his experience as the grandson of Holocaust survivors.

Smiga, of Manheim Township, tells the story of his great-uncle, also a Holocaust survivor, who was whipped in the face by a Nazi and whose eyes still routinely bled decades later as a result. But when Smiga saw his great-uncle dab his eyes at Smiga's bar mitzvah ceremony, the tissue had tears, not blood, on it.

"It was at that moment when I realized the incredible strength my elders embody and, ultimately, the Jewish population as a whole.  Overcome with joy he shed tears, tears that represented a victory over the Nazis, proud to see a new generation of Jews carrying on the Jewish tradition even after a time where the Jewish future did not look so promising," Smiga writes in his essay.  

Confirmation was the next step in bringing forward that tradition in a personal way, he writes: "The confirmation process brands on me a promise to continue sharing my relatives' stories of the holocaust. As a people, we must never forget; the world must never forget. I will pass stories onto my children and they will pass stories onto their children, just as my grandparents and great-uncle did to me."

In an interview on Wednesday, Smiga said he never saw the ceremony as an imposition.

"It just seemed like something I didn't feel like I had to do, it was something I knew I was going to do all along," he says. "It was another step in my Jewish life."