This is another of sister
Suzi Youman's
occasional reports.

I have just returned from a Bar Mitzvah.  It is amazing the things I do on purpose.  Howard,  Arthur's partner,  told me that the service would take about an hour and a half and that I wouldn’t need to cover my head.  Howard was wrong. The invitation said nine o’clock Saturday morning.  The synagogue, a place I had never been (this particular one or any other) was 45 minutes from home. Gulping a cup of coffee while squirming into panty hose I wondered why I wanted to put myself through all this for the son of a client of Arthur’s when Arthur wasn’t attending himself.  Curiosity spurred me on and at precisely nine o’clock I parked the car and slipped into a back pew. The service was already underway and I was surprised to find myself one of only a very few in attendance.  The father of the Bar Mitzvah is a very prominent attorney and I was certain he had invited more than his accountant and significant other to this momentous event. He had, but they were smarter and more informed.  They were Jewish.  They knew the service took a lot longer than an hour and a half and that they could drift in whenever they wanted.  And they did.  For the next hour and 45 minutes people wandered in and out and up and down and all around the synagogue. These are very mobile people, these Conservative Jews.  They don’t sit still at all.  They chat.  They get up and greet each other, sometimes effusively, climbing over their seat mates and row mates without so much as a pardon me.  They seem to pay relatively little attention to the service, which continues seemingly unaware of the congregations lapse in attention. Eventually the place filled up.  There were lots of children.  They were each given a stuffed plush toy Torrah to carry around in procession behind the father of Bar Mitzvah (who was carrying the real Torrah, gaily wrapped in Christmas paper of the kind my father would have liked and my mother would have thought garrish). As the children passed by the wife of the Rabbi, they were each given a chocolate Hershey’s kiss.   Communion of a sort, I guess. Everyone wore a skull cap of some kind.  Or a hat.  Everyone but me, because of course, Howard said I wouldn’t need one.  And everyone wore a prayer shawl, men and women alike.  The object of the prayer shawl is to keep adjusting it so it won’t fall off.  All of the time.  And especially if you are the presiding rabbi.  It makes for action during the murmured prayers which are all in Hebrew so no one pays too much attention and it doesn’t matter much. The father of the Bar Mitzvah made repeated trips around the congregation shaking hands, hugging, being hugged.  Teenagers changed seats as if they were playing musical chairs.  A woman about 2 feet tall who wore an enormously large hat was a very social girl. She got up at least six times in the course of an hour and climbed over the man and woman next to her to greet other short women.  Many of them were as wide as they were tall.  Which may have accounted for the padded seats in the pews.  Like seats in a new cinema, these seats were cushioned for comfort and had arms.  No hard seats for contemplation and asking God’s forgiveness for these Jews; when they actually sat for any duration they were going to do it in style. Another woman, dressed for a Caribbean cruise, kept asking a woman three rows behind her how some other woman was fairing.  Was she eating?  Was she able to get around?  Was she comfortable?  Was she pleasant? Or maybe that was peasant. At about 11:15 a past middle aged couple who looked more than half deranged and dressed like left over hippies and to whom I would not entrust the care of my dogs, were greeted by the crowd.  They had just returned from Russia where they had adopted two infants, a boy with long hair and a girl with none.  The two babies were passed among the audience like a collection plate, kissed and patted, and passed on, while the new parents were treated to a Mazel Tov song and lots of applause.  The two children didn’t cry.  I would have, and almost did. The man who sat next to me was very old.  And he smelled of moth balls.  I assumed that it was actually his prayer shawl which smelled of mothballs, it seemed to be an ancient as he.  I can’t be sure of course.  It could have been that he’d been mistaken for the dearly departed and partially embalmed before they saw their mistake that he was (a) alive and (b) Jewish and therefore not to be embalmed at any cost.  Every once in a while he would list my way, turn his head and breathing through his mouth make this glutteral sound that went “Uhhhhhhhh ohhhhhhh ghhhhh ghhhhh ahhhhhh” until his wife would pull on his prayer shawl with whatever strength she could muster and get him upright once more.  Seconds would pass and he’d start to list my way again.   It wouldn’t have been so bad if his breath hadn’t also been the worst I’d ever had the pleasure of smelling.  I spent much of the remainder of the service with my hand up over my mouth and my head averted. By the way, Jewish men really are.  Jewish, I mean.  The man part could be questionable because it is obviously the women who run the show, but they are definitely Jewish. After more than two and a half hours of children running up and down the aisles, Hebrew prayers unheard being uttered at the podium, the parents of the Bar Mitzvah being Mazel Toved and the rest of the congregation constantly pulling on their prayer shawls while kibbitzing amongst themselves and my seat mate getting closer and closer to resting his bald, moth ball smelling head on my breast, I, like Elvis, left the theatre. The play hadn’t finished; this was just intermission. The second act came as a posh party with lots of liquor, lots of food, lots of people.  Lots of kids, lots of balloons, lots of Jewish men and Jewish women, lots of furs, and lots of jewelry.  Lots of nasal intonations, lots of envelopes for the Bar Mitzvah boy, filled with lots of money. Well, he does have to pay for medical or law school. I met Mr. Food at the party.  Mr. Food, the guy who does the Grand Union commercial plugs while showing the viewers how to make quick and easy meals during your local noon news.  Syndicated.  From Fort Lauderdale.  All over America or at least where there are Grand Union stores. He’s originally from Troy.  Real name isn’t Mr. Food, it’s Art Ginsberg. There weren’t any cops or garbage collectors at the party.  Not too many Jewish cops or garbage collectors, I guess. I felt a little like Pat Nixon when we went to retrieve our coats; plain cloth amongst the furs.