A destination b'nai mitzvah industry is taking shape on Maui, as this teen learned after COVID scrambled her original plans

(JTA) - Feeling the sand between her toes was Teva Goldstein's favorite part of her December 2021 bat mitzvah on the island of Maui. She and her family all wore white, accessorized with purple leis.

The beach in Hawaii was nearly 4,000 miles from her home in Dallas, another thousand miles from where she had lived for most of her life in Maryland. Yet her family had chosen it to mark her bat mitzvah, the moment when she would symbolically assume adulthood among the Jewish people.

The path to the beach was long and winding due to the COVID-19 pandemic, pitted with setbacks and anxiety. But it ha...