With the flurry that surrounds a b\’nai mitzvah celebration, we often lose sight that this day — this passage from childhood to adulthood — will be one of the most meaningful memories of his or her life.
Joanne Rocklin is obsessed with food. On her 60th birthday, she began summarizing her life with the essentials: \”I love to cook. I love to eat\”. But it\’s her passion for writing that has enabled her to come to terms with her life and her faith.
The focus of the centennial celebration was on exuberant worship services and prayer. For these unshakeable believers in the literal truth of the Jewish and Christian bibles, a kinship to Jews and especially Israel is a given.
\”Keeping Up With the Steins\” proves that you don\’t have to be Jewish to make a funny, insider Jewish film, or that if you grow up in the Bronx or went to school in North Hollywood, you become a Jew by osmosis.
Selecting an environmental mitzvah project is a good starting point. But consider adding eco-friendly substitutes for white plastic tableware, Styrofoam centerpieces, Mylar balloons and elaborate banners. Are your invitations printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks?
Whether you\’re trying to capture a wedding, b\’nai mitzvah or 50th anniversary celebration, the day will come and go whether you\’re ready for it or not. Unless you\’re prepared, the opportunity to capture family history can easily slip through your fingers.
It\’s not that glitz, glamour and secular themes at b\’nai mitzvah are inherently problematic, like in the soon-to-be-released one-upsmanship film, \”Keeping Up With the Steins,\” but when they\’re inadequately balanced with Jewish values we can be left with an empty shell of a party that undermines the entire point of these meaningful milestones.
Not all seders are sit-down affairs. When \”Dayenu\” begins at the home of Simone Shenassa of West Orange, N.J., everyone takes bunches of scallions and hits everyone else, to imitate the whipping of the slaves.
\”Mozart does not belong to any nation. It would be a total misunderstanding for anyone to lay claim to Mozart,\” said Peter Marboe, Vienna Mozart Year artistic director. \”That makes it obscene that the Nazis should claim him as an example of a great German artist and all the while hide his Jewish collaborators.\”
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.