The ritual ceremony of the Bar-mitzvah marks the Jewish adolescent’s religious coming of age. This article describes the ritual and attempts to elucidate the sense it embodies, the role it plays in the life of Jewish men, and the anthropological and psychoanalytical stakes it entails. While recalling the broad traits of Judaism, the discussion underscores the very particular status of the text in the Jewish religion and, consequently, the particular role of the transcendant law to which Jewish men submit at the moment of puberty. This has psychic repercussions on the identity of Jewish adolescents, whose affiliation with the religious community is determined by their parents when they are born, then assumed in their own name when they reach their religious majority.