For weeks our house was in chaos as my wife swept through recipe books and fervently practised ‘ganaching’ (icing) in search of the perfect celebratory cake. But our traumas will have been as nothing set against those of my sister as intricate plans were made and remade for the impending Bar Mitzvah of her son, Joshua Alston, at Kingston Liberal Synagogue.

Since around the 14th century CE, the Bar Mitzvah ceremony has formally marked the transition to adulthood – around their 13th birthday - of young Jewish males. In more recent years the female Bat Mitzvah has also become common.

The term means literally “son of the commandments” and by undertaking a Bar or Bat Mitzvah the Jewish child is taking on responsibility for observing all 613 Mitzvot (commandments).

These laws include: the obvious: to love and fear God; the sensible: not to oppress the weak or bear a grudge; and the esoteric: not to bow down on a smooth stone. For those that take the injunction literally, every aspect of their life will now be governed, from how they cut their hair to when they have sex.

In recognition that 13 is perhaps too young to decide for oneself to take on such responsibilities, many progressive synagogues, such as Kingston, have introduced a further ceremony, at 15 or 16, called Kabbalat Torah (confirmation or more literally “accepting Torah”), in the hope that the decision will be more mature and more personal.

For many years, Kabbalat Torah replaced Bar Mitzvah in my own Liberal Jewish movement, sparing my sister and myself the trial to which my nephew was now being put, but at Kingston Liberal Synagogue they do both. My wife’s cake-making talents will no doubt be deployed again.

Traditionally, the Bar Mitzvah boy will read – in biblical Hebrew - the weekly Torah portion (Parashah).This is no small task: the ancient lettering is hard enough but the challenge is made inconceivably hard by the lack of any vowels in the Torah scrolls, these simply being ‘implied’.

Appropriately, and not wholly coincidentally, Joshua’s passage (Numbers 31:1-13) deals with the transfer of the leadership of the Israelites from Moses to Joshua. My nephew has spent many months rehearsing his Torah passage and learning it by heart. But this is not enough: in the Liberal Movement we place great stock not simply on reciting but understanding, and Joshua is therefore expected not only to translate but also to explain the passage as he reads it.

In what I understand to have been perfect Hebrew, Joshua successfully does this contending, as he does, with the distraction of numerous cousins darting back and forth around the hall, a sideshow the Kingston regulars seemed to welcome rather than merely tolerate. (Perhaps the acceptance of young children is explained as the Rabbi brings her own seven month-old on to the bimah (platform) at the end of the service.)

But Joshua’s task is not limited to a single passage. In the liberal tradition, the Bar Mitzvah boy leads the service as a whole - well over an hour - with other members of the Alston/Rich clan providing occasional support, including, on electric piano, some modern hymns and musical poetry.

What’s more, Joshua – supported by his brother and mother – has chosen much of the service himself, with contemporary passages such as Sheenagh Pugh’s poem “Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse…” and Christina Rossetti’s poem “Remember me when I am gone away..”, alongside traditional prayers.

There is also the traditional Haftorah reading (taken from the later books of what Christians would think of as the Old Testament). On this occasion, it’s Joshua 6:1-20, which deals with the capture of Jericho by the blowing of horns. I am uncertain what to read into this for the modern-day Joshua.

The service concludes with Joshua being passed symbolically the heavy and delicate torah scroll, whilst he declares his loyalty to the Jewish faith and prays to God to “guide me, and keep me strong, so I may fulfil the high hopes that rest on me.”

And with that, the service is complete, but not the Bar Mitzvah, as much food, drink and of course, my wife’s Bolton Wanderer’s cake is essential to the celebration which follows.

Joshua is, I remind him, now Jewishly legally entitled to marry – then again, perhaps my sister isn’t ready for another family party quite yet.