Bat Mitzvah

My cousin, Tammi, had her Bat Mitzvah in May. It was been nice, but I think they tried to go into too many directions. See, they were not quite used to the idea of an American Bar or Bat mitzvah, with the expensive theme parties. They thought that my brother's gambling night had been one of the silliest ideas ever. It was supposed to be.

At the same time, many of Tammi's classmates who were Americans had the Americanesque parties and the family felt the need to emulate the Americans a little. But having already paid for two fancy weddings, they did not have so much extra to throw around. So, when they needed help getting it together, my aunt called her sister.

My Mom, as I've been explaining it recently, has complete evidence of two Jewish parents. She loves to get things, but she loathes paying full price. So, we (I can say we due to the minimal amount of help I gave.) asked her to send up party favors that she could find. So, my mom sent up two bags (via family friends that were visiting Israel, of course.)

"Oh my god,we can't give these out. Ima, look what Doda Susie sent." The contents of the bag were eight little Japanese masks, three canisters of fancy sculpted soapx, and around fifty odd samples bottles of shampoo, half of them saying Holiday Inn or Hyatt right on the bottle.

One of my cousins threatened not to attend. "Ima, we might as well give them ketchup packets!" I had thought it might have been a joke, so I wrote home, and sure enough, I found out that it wasn't.

"Michael, a Bat mitzvah up there isn't what it is down here. It's ok." OK, when in Rome...so I helped them set up the party. While setting up the bags with the party favors (cosmetics), we thought we were going to run out of the shampoo bottles.

"Look," I said, "no problem. We go down to the King David hotel, ride up the elevator like we have a room there, walk the floors like we're going to the room, and when we find the maids cart, we take a few bottles."

"Michael, that's tantamount to staling."

"^Oh yeah, cause my mom paid top dollar for the ones you see right here.^" As it turned out, we had enough, and meanwhile, my cousin was pacified in the agreement that they wouldn't give the shampoo bottles with the names of the hotels on them.

Again, it was a nice party, but it went in too many directions for it to have survived back home. It was like the Frankenstein monster trying to sew onto himself more mismatched limbs. You've got the cosmetics on the table, the Japanese masks hung, for the short time before they were grabbed by the kids, on the walls. Also on the wall, from a previous party, a week before are large Chinese landscape murals. The Bat Mitzva was the same week as Israel's fiftieth Independence Day, so taped to the ceiling above the dance floor, was this huge crepe paper blue and white Maypolesque...something, that ended up taking off part of the ceiling with it. On the dance floor, you had the accordionist they had hired pumping away the Jewish dance tunes. For the food, you had ^the very common combination^ of lasagna and barekas. It was good, but the whole thing seemed illogical.

See, now, the thing is, that the party sounds strange in describing it...but I can't say why. So they went in too many directions? So what? It was a fun party, the kids liked it, so why would I have the impression that it would have been a joke stateside?

Get me outa here!!!

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---

Michael Kadish

"When anyone is held up, he shall immediately telephone the details to a telephone operator. She will plug in every phone in the city and relate the details of the holdup. Near every telephone is to be a shotgun, hanging on the wall. When the story of the holdup is spread through the phones every citizen will seize his shotgun, and rush to the street. All whistles will blow, and at this signal all traffic, including pedestrians, will halt. Anyone besides law officers who moves will be shot." -- George W. Durham, proposition to stop crime in Kansas City

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