\”Did you book the Lakers cheerleaders?\” asked Rabbi Steven Leder, referring to a notorious bar mitzvah party in Los Angeles, where he is rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
My husband and I spent our courtship on the protest fields of Washington, D.C. Yet here we were, in the thick of planning what I am sure we once believed to be the most bourgeois enterprise imaginable: a \”catered affair,\” entertainment that would cost thousands and be over in a matter of hours. How had we gotten ourselves into this?
Who is Marion Pritchard and why would a Jewish girl choose to share her special day with a non-Jew more than six times her age?
The Los Angeles bar mitzvah is a sitting duck. Wild tales of gross excess put fear, disgust and embarrassment into the heart of every Jewish parent I know.
\”I don\’t want a bat mitzvah,\” she told her parents. \”It\’s just for you and your relatives. You don\’t even need me there. So why don\’t you just throw your own party?\”
The service was uneventful (including the requisite rabbi\’s sermon on \”The Passion\”). The party was great — classy in a way affairs that expensive rarely succeed in being. But as the day progressed, a subtle feeling I barely remembered kept sneaking up on me. The insecurity of 13.
Three Rabbis were talking over a regular Sunday morning breakfast get-together.
Results of the two new studies are mixed enough that translating them into policy recommendations will not be easy.
Jennifer Loeb\’s favorite part of her bat mitzvah last spring was chanting from the Torah.
While scholars argue about the origin of the adult bar mitzvah (or bat mitzvah) ceremony, there\’s no question that over the last two decades it has been growing in popularity, primarily for those who had never undergone the ritual as a 13-year-old.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.