It might be worth noting that back in the day when bar mitzvah age really meant a legal majority, and people were getting married not too much after that age, it was more or less universal custom in the entire world to marry that young: no one knew any better. And people were often much less long-lived, due to inadequate nutrition, primitive rudimentary medical care, lack of antibiotics, and far higher frequency of misadventure, so it made sense to get married younger.
As the world evolved, and changing ethics and lifestyles permitted the flourishing of childhood past puberty, so did attitudes about marriage in Jewish Law. No one has been marrying kids of bar mitzvah age for centuries, and today bar/bat mitzvahs are understood as purely ritual majority, for sacramental duties but not for everyday legal purposes.
This is why Jewish Law was designed to evolve, and Torah was designed to be interpreted and reinterpreted: because human understanding and human society evolves, and requires re-examination and new ways of looking at things, in order to keep the process of ethical and moral growth moving forward.
But it is flat-out egregious to suggest that Torah or Jewish Law supports pedophelia. That is simply not the case: such an interpretation of Torah is wholly contradictory to the Jewish sociolegal ethos.
speechless!
