September 9, 2009

The bimah is only a few feet above the floor, yet for any mom looking out across the synagogue at the gathered sea of mostly familiar faces, she might as well be Moses addressing the crowd from atop Mount Sinai. While the audience is friendly and the content of her speech concerns matters far less urgent than those of life and death — or the very future of a nation — she is nonetheless anxious and tense. The occasion is her son’s bar mitzvah and she wants her speech to strike just the right chord — a blend of poignant, interesting, relevant, terse and funny.

Her position in the lineup doesn’t make things any easier. The haftarah can be — as they say in show business — a tough act to follow. A longtime Jewish best-seller full of intrigue, conflict and larger-than-life characters, the haftarah also packs some pretty big moral messages. However, it can also be hard to follow for just the opposite reason — it flatlines and leaves an audience bored, listless and on the edge of sleep. Why? For starters, most of the assembled don’t even understand the Hebrew. 

The crowd is expectant, the silence is nearly devastating and all eyes are focused on mom. Uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings, cousins, friends, neighbors, colleagues — not to mention the rabbi and cantor — all hope for something funny to change the mood, or at least something interesting and perhaps unexpected. In such a situation, humor is the perfect antidote. First of all, it draws in an audience and makes them listen, creating a sense of relevance, inclusion and heightened anticipation. Humor also relieves boredom and, wherever anxiety or tension exists, it breaks the ice. This is not to say that mom wants to deliver a nonstop, wall-to-wall joke fest. A heartfelt speech peppered with some funny, self-effacing, slightly mischievous lines would likely be just right.

Similarly, when the bar or bat mitzvah student has to give his or her general speech or, more specifically, introductions for all of the candle-lighting ceremony participants, he or she certainly does not want to appear nervous, awkward or boring in front of friends and loved ones. This is a weird and difficult enough time as it is, with changing voices, hormones and friends. So what better way to disarm the room than with some punch lines?

Back in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, turning 13 might have meant moving out into your own tent, taking a spouse, buying a reliable used donkey and farming the land — not exactly laughing matters. But in 2009 America, a 13-year-old is more likely to be crying over eighth-grade math, texting friends about last night’s episode of “Entourage” and battling increased perspiration with the criminally nauseating AXE body spray. Entry to adulthood? More like entry to pre-algebra and the local mall. The life of today’s teenager cries out for some comedic relief.

In addition, we’re talking here about Jews! While just about every ethnic group can appreciate humor and irreverence, for Jews it’s a primal need, a psychological defense mechanism and practically a national sport.

Now, you might be thinking: “OK, funny guy. But how does one write a funny bar mitzvah speech?” It takes a little work, but it is certainly doable for those with the least bit of comedic abilities.

First, you write an honest, heartfelt, “serious” speech, to get all of the mushy, poignant, tear-jerking stuff that needs to be said down on paper. Once that’s done, then it’s time to create and work in the funny parts.

Rules for Comedyin Speech Writing

Try to keep the jokes general rather than too inside or obscure — those things only your family or closest friends would understand. Not everyone has to know every reference, but in most cases it’s important to shoot for recognition by at least 60 percent of the audience.

Jokes have a specific structure — a setup and punch line, not the other way around. Jokes can be as short as one sentence in length, but it’s important that the setup not go on too long; consider that your audience has been sitting in shul for several hours and a long setup might not play well.

Part of comedy comes from specificity, so when “punching” a joke — writing the ending words — “fish” can usually be replaced by “halibut” or “red snapper,” and “car” can usually be replaced by “Prius” or “Buick Skylark.” Some words just sound funny, like “halibut” and “Prius.” Develop your feel for that, and then use words that have a sharp, crisp, funny sound.

Use exaggerated or mixed-metaphor comparisons. For instance, “He’s made more people cry than Simon Cowell.” Or, “Her report cards have seen more A’s than the Oakland Coliseum.”

And it’s OK to get a little edgy or negative with your humor, but do not cross or possibly even get too close to the line. Know your crowd. If they are all pretty salty and irreverent, up and down, you can go a lot farther than if they are primarily prim, proper and socially conservative. You can ruffle feathers, but don’t singe them or rip them out.

The following are some examples of how to deal with specific topics:

Personal Appearance

If you joke about someone’s personal appearance, it’s important that your subject have a good sense of humor about the topic. Making a public joke about someone’s attractiveness, baldness or obesity can be embarrassing for a family member or friend unless they are open and comfortable with such issues. Does the person regularly joke about these topics upon meeting a total stranger? If so, then it could be fair game.

Is Uncle Joe extremely tall? You could write: “It makes sense that Joe loves living in the Valley, because when he stands up, he’s actually above the smog.” That line combines a gentle dig at a local geographic area with a gentle dig at an attribute — height — which almost no one is going to mind being ribbed about.

Say one of the honorees is an extremely beautiful woman: “Cousin Sally is quite a looker, as everyone knows. It’s almost annoying. At her table, we had to include place settings for three stalkers.”

Will Sally or anyone else mind that you made a joke about her attractiveness? Probably not.

Specific Personal Attributes and Qualities

As with personal appearance, make the jokes about qualities that your subject would take pride in, or that are widely known as safe topics for ribbing. For instance: “Bubbie Nadine acts incredibly youthful, like she’s a fraction of her age. Just last seder she read the Four Questions. But I think she went a little far when she kept the afikomen money.” Or, “Brian is pretty oblivious to Jewish stuff. He thinks ‘Haf-Torah’ means 50 percent of the regular scroll.”

A Person’s Career or Hobby

When writing about someone’s career or hobbies, it’s important to stay away from anything too tragic or embarrassing. You might try: “Herman is quite the surgeon. With my own eyes, I have seen him separate the inferior lateral gluteous from the ventricular pectoralis. And that was just the lox plate.” Or, “Debbie’s a certified public accountant. We better be nice to her, or she’s going to report my savings bonds.”

A Specific Life Incident or Episode

Specific anecdotes are great, but don’t write about painful injury, serious crime, horrendous loss or anything else that may lead to gasps, murmurs and down-turned eyes. This could work: “Everybody knows about the time Samantha bought 10 pounds of candy, carved and lit the jack-o-lantern and stayed home all night waiting for trick-or-treaters … on October 30. Yesterday, just to be safe, we put a sign on the temple door: ‘Wrong day! Come back tomorrow!’” Or, “Barry’s still living down the time he wore a neck tie with his tuxedo at Bill and Emma’s wedding. We almost made today ‘business casual.’”

Try Out the Jokes

Have fun and get creative with your jokes. But it’s important to try them out on a small inner circle beforehand. This enables you to get a sense of what “hits,” thus providing you with the necessary confidence when it’s time to deliver at the big event. Many people are naturally funny in real life, and some are less so. If you feel somewhat lacking when it comes to a sharply developed funny bone, you can always take some time to study up on the great comedians — watch videos at home or listen to CDs in the car — to absorb some rules of the comedy writing science. Or you can consult with funny people you happen to know. Effective humor often comes from the place where total honesty and believable experience meets playful heightening and even a touch of the absurd. And, if done well, even sarcasm, cynicism, incredulity and envy can be spun into comedy gold in such a speech.

When it comes to the delivery, it doesn’t hurt to recite the whole document at least a few times beforehand, carefully noting the best places for specific word emphasis and dramatic pausing, which you can notate on the page. If need be, watch and listen to some excellent speech-givers or “roasters” for an idea of timing and attitude. Above all, be sure to deliver your speech with a little verve, a touch of attitude … and a whole lot of love.

Adam Gropman is a professional comedic speechwriter who can be found online at thefunnybiz.biz.

Deborah Siegel Baker is mother to identical twins Max and Sam, who will celebrate their b’nai mitzvah in 2011. She already experienced the joys and pressures of planning a simcha with her daughter’s bat mitzvah four years ago at Hillcrest Jewish Center in Flushing, N.Y. And given that experience, the prospect of planning for two has her on edge, even though it’s still two years away.

“I’m frightened,” she said.

Siegel Baker knows Max is competitive with his brother Sam, who is older by six minutes. “I don’t want him to demoralize his brother by saying, ‘Ha ha, I’m better.’ It will be a challenge.”

She has considered holding separate b’nai mitzvah but doesn’t relish the extra work and expense that would require. Besides, “They’ve always had joint birthday parties and never had a problem with it,” she said.

Siegel Baker’s fears illustrate what the families of twins often face: what it will mean to have a teen share their moment in the spotlight. For many, a bar or bat mitzvah is a time when a child is the center of attention. Twins — whether identical or fraternal — rarely have opportunities to shine alone, even though they are often different people with different interests who happened to be born to the same mother at roughly the same time.

At a time when fertility treatments are leading to an increase in twin and triplet births — let alone octuplets — parents and synagogues are left to wrestle with issues of how to arrange the b’nai mitzvah or b’not mitzvah and the celebrations afterward so all the children feel it’s their day.

Share and Share Alike

By the time they reach bar or bat mitzvah age, twins have spent much of their time together (sharing bedrooms, classes and birthdays) and have been identified as twins for so long that a bar or bat mitzvah is often another event they are expected to share. But this expectation can lead to resentment.

Fraternal twins Maya and Ravenna Smith celebrated their b’not mitzvah on May 30 at Beth Israel, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Berkeley, and their mother, Iris Greenberg-Smith, initially tried to separate their celebrations.

“There is a low-grade war between them,” Greenberg-Smith said. “One of them [Maya, older by 18 minutes] walks around saying she wants to be an only child.”

Maya freely admitted that she and her sister fight about “twice a day.”

In hindsight, Greenberg-Smith said holding two separate celebrations would have reduced the tension.

But when she voiced her concerns to her daughters, they insisted that they wanted to share the simcha. “They are so used to being part of a pair that they didn’t know what I was talking about,” Greenberg-Smith said.

The sisters said they were more comfortable reading together from the Book of Ruth. Despite the fighting, the two have learned to rely on each other during stressful and difficult times.

During their May 31 party, the girls wrote speeches about one another and expressed appreciation for the other being there.

“I don’t always want to be alone,” Ravenna said. “I’m glad I did it with her.”

Maya added, “When it gets scary, I don’t know if I want to be an only child.”

The pressure to share the day can, however, reduce its importance.

For Carly Goldberg of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., sharing the bat mitzvah with her identical twin Emily on Dec. 1, 2007, at Conservative Temple Beth Torah, in nearby Tamarac, was a lot like sharing a birthday.

The “downfall to sharing a bat mitzvah” is you don’t feel special alone, Carly said.

She doesn’t refer to her bat mitzvah as the most important day of her life. Rather, “it’s the most important day of our life,” she said.

Carly is younger than Emily — and grows tired of being reminded that Emily is older by “13 long, beautiful, independent minutes,” Emily said.

The pull between wanting a solo moment on the bimah and not wanting to exclude their sibling is a conflict not easily resolved for most twins who spoke with The Journal.

But when asked if she would have wanted her own bat mitzvah, Carly couldn’t imagine a bat mitzvah without her sister.

“If I wasn’t a twin, well, yes,” she said. “But I’m a twin, so no, I wouldn’t.”

D.I.Y. B’not Mitzvah

Each synagogue and congregation has its own rules and requirements for what a bar or bat mitzvah student must do. But few seem to have plans for twins, which often leads to sharing the load on the bimah.

Since there’s just one haftarah each week, twins typically split the reading. And since there are only a finite number of aliyot, the twins often split those as well. None of the twins interviewed said they shared the maftir, the traditional final aliyah usually reserved for the bar or bat mitzvah.

For Sarah and Rebecca Elspas, who celebrated their b’not mitzvah on May 30 at Young Israel of Century City, a Modern Orthodox congregation, creating their own service allowed them to tailor the experience to their comfort level.

Since they couldn’t read from the Torah, the emphasis for their do-it-yourself b’not mitzvah fell to their speeches.

Those who know the Elspas might not be surprised. Sarah and Rebecca complement each other. Sarah’s better at math, Rebecca is the writer. Sarah is a reader, Rebecca a dancer. Each uses her strengths to help the other.

For their speeches, they were each other’s best audience, critic and supporter.

Those who heard it, mother Janis recounted, might have thought they were watching Laurel and Hardy, Mutt and Jeff or Abbott and Costello reincarnated.

“It was like a stand-up routine between the two,” Janis said.

Invitation to Creativity

Having twins does lend families an opportunity to indulge creativity when it comes to the invitations. For her daughters’ celebration at Congregation Beth El, a Reform synagogue in Berkeley, Brenda Kahn played a game by sending out an invitation that opened in the middle, like an ark, revealing the two girls — never identifying who was Rose and who was Gabrielle.

“We’re having more fun with the invitation,” Brenda said. “People are getting a kick out of it.”

And Barbara Goldberg said having identical twin daughters, Emily and Carly, had a major impact on the theme: chai squared.

“We celebrate this 13-year journey of lives doubly blessed and of living life more fully,” the family wrote on the inside of the invitation, while the outside featured several photos of Emily and Carly at various ages.

Two Kids, One Party?

Parents of twins who had older single-birth children said the cost and effort of planning a celebration for twins is not much different than planning for one, outside of getting input from two children instead of one. But that’s assuming everyone agrees.

In the cases where the twins agree to share the event, families can save money by holding one reception.

“One DJ, one caterer, one florist if you want it, one invitation — look how much you’re saving…. You don’t have to spend $50,000,” said Goldberg, who added that expenses for Emily and Carly’s b’not mitzvah totaled about $30,000.

But planning wasn’t as easy for fraternal twins Sydney and Sam Zucker of Austin, Texas, whose b’nai mitzvah were celebrated on May 2 at Congregation Agudas Achim, a Conservative synagogue. Being of different genders, they wanted vastly different receptions, leaving mother Dana Zucker to sort it out.

“Different sexes bring different things to the table,” Zucker said.

Sydney, older by 19 minutes, likes frilly things and dancing. Sam likes rough-and-tumble sports. She wanted lounge chairs; he wanted cabaret tables. They wanted different cakes. They also have different friends, so the reception had 92 children instead of the 50 Zucker usually sees at a bar or bat mitzvah.

She said her children didn’t get everything they wanted. Instead, it was a unique blend — each got their different cakes and different themes, two sets of ushers and two photographers.

But in these economic times, one local family found a way to work around the conflicts over planning a party for twins — to not have one at all.

Wendy Tipp couldn’t fathom throwing an opulent party. Instead, her son Billy, the younger identical twin by one minute, suggested a family vacation. Older twin Charlie agreed.

After the b’nai mitzvah at Kol Tikvah, a Reform congregation in Woodland Hills, there was no $50,000 shindig.

“We didn’t need a party because it wasn’t necessary,” Billy said.

Instead, the family is planning to take a two-week trip — at about half the cost — to a destination like Brazil, France or Moncton, New Brunswick, site of the 2010 Track and Field World Championships (Billy’s into track and cross country, his mother said).

“I was proud of these guys,” Wendy said. “I lost sight, [thinking that family] wouldn’t want to come because there was no big party. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and said this is the way it should be.”

When Jessica Zutz was training with the U.S. women’s open field hockey team, she hadn’t given much thought to participating in Team USA’s b’nai mitzvah, an event scheduled before the start of the 18th Maccabiah Games in July.

But once Zutz, 24, arrived in Israel, the Marina del Rey resident knew she wanted to make that part of her Maccabiah experience.

“I felt like it was the right thing to do,” she said.

More than 100 participants from Southern California had arrived in Israel for the Maccabiah Games, and many took part in Team USA’s massive b’nai mitzvah on July 5, a service that drew hundreds of American athletes to Hebrew University’s outdoor amphitheatre to become sons and daughters of the Torah. Situated on top of Mount Scopus, with a view of the Judean Desert, the attendees took in a sunset that eventually gave way to a full moon.

The group b’nai mitzvah is a tradition for the American delegation at the Maccabiah Games, the world’s third-largest athletic competition, which take place in Israel every four years and draw roughly 7,000 athletes from dozens of countries. B’nai mitzvah events during the 2001 and 2005 games attracted 100 and 120 American participants respectively.

Jed Margolis, executive director of Team USA, said he anticipated a larger turnout this year and purchased 200 commemorative necklaces to pass out to participating athletes.

“We have this dynamic rabbi, and we said, ‘Well, let’s shoot for 200. That should be enough,’” Margolis said. “We were overwhelmed when more than 600 showed up and we didn’t have enough necklaces for them.”

Margolis attributed the great turnout, in part, to Rabbi Erwin Kula, president of CLAL, a Jewish think tank and center for leadership training, who performed the ceremony, conducting it in English and Hebrew. “He made it very open and user friendly,” Margolis said.

Zutz agreed, describing the rabbi as a good motivator. “He always had us singing,” she said, “which is no easy feat when you have that many athletes.”

During the ceremony, athletes dressed casually but in all white, linked arms and sang songs, accompanied by a guitar.

Blessings and the Torah portion were sent out in advance to the athletes, but enthusiasm, rather than memorized liturgy, took precedence.

“We try to make it as engaging as possible,” Margolis said.

If an athlete had already had a bar or bat mitzvah, he or she was still encouraged to participate.

Michael Coakley, 29, a men’s open futsal player (a 5-on-5 form of soccer generally played indoors), was one such person. He described the event as a singular opportunity.

“It was just an amazing experience,” said Coakley, whose sister, Raleigh, was a member of the women’s open soccer team that defeated Israel in the finals. “To be there with my sister, since she had never had a bat mitzvah, that was really special.”

He added, “Our parents were shocked and extremely proud.”

In addition to athletes, other Team USA personnel participated in the b’nai mitzvah service as well.

Summer Bloom, a 28-year-old athletic trainer from Santa Monica, had already had a bat mitzvah, but she decided to take part because of “the idea of being bat mitzvahed in the State of Israel. It was a beautiful site, overlooking all of Jerusalem. I wanted to jump on that opportunity.”

But not everything went smoothly. Zutz said her group arrived late for the event after a trip to Theodore Herzl’s grave. Despite being dirty from a day of sightseeing, the athletes had to rush to put on their white clothes.

And Coakley joked that his team almost missed being recognized: “They forgot to call us and then at the last minute, ‘Oh yeah, men’s futsal, come up on stage.’ It was funny,” he said.

A celebration with food, music and dancing followed the ceremony.

“It was a perfect desert night scene. You had 900 of your newest closest friends surrounding you,” Zutz said, referring to the coaches, trainers and other Team USA members in addition to the athletes.

The b’nai mitzvah service is one part of Team USA’s “pre-camp,” a program for junior and open athletes that takes place before the games. Pre-camp includes six days of touring, lectures and other activities designed to foster unity and establish connections with the land of Israel. This year, about 750 athletes out of 900 with Team USA participated.

Margolis said that no other teams offer an experience like Team USA’s pre-camp, including the b’nai mitzvah.

“We’re committed to the whole cultural and educational piece of being in Israel and being part of the Maccabiah,” he said.

Despite the pre-camp’s $1 million cost to his organization, Margolis said that they are determined to continue it, citing the large turnout of the b’nai mitzvah event as representative of its success. “It’s a vital part of what we do,” he said.

Rating his experience at Maccabiah, Coakley called it “a 10 for sure.” Besides feeling proud of his sister’s bat mitzvah and gold medal, he enjoyed meeting Jews from all over the world.

“Not only are you Jews,” Coakley said, “but you’re also world-class athletes. What else could you want? Plus you’re in Israel. You’re in the homeland.”