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Wall St. Journal: You Don't Have to Be Jewish To Want a Bar Mitzvah Party
- From: MaxwellSt <MaxwellSt...>
- Subject: Wall St. Journal: You Don't Have to Be Jewish To Want a Bar Mitzvah Party
- Date: Thu 15 Jan 2004 15.32 (GMT)
January 14, 2004 11:39 a.m. EST
You Don't Have to Be Jewish To Want a Bar Mitzvah Party
More Kids on Cusp of 13 Get Faux Post-Rite Parties; Picking Hawaiian Theme
By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
After going to a dozen bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs last year, Laura Jean
Stargardt told her parents she wanted one of her own. She said she found the
singing inspiring and offered to learn Hebrew. She also said she wanted a big
party.
Her parents thought the request was unusual since the family is Methodist.
But they co-hosted a lavish party for her and two of her friends last month
that
looked like a bat mitzvah, without the religion. They booked a country club
in Dallas and a disk jockey, invited 125 friends, and hired a professional
dancer that Laura had seen at her friends' bar mitzvah parties.
"I wanted to be Jewish so I could have a bat mitzvah," says Laura. "Having
the party fulfilled that."
A number of kids about to turn 13 who aren't Jewish are bugging their parents
for parties that resemble those held following bar mitzvah ceremonies. In
some affluent communities, parents line up the same entertainment and book the
same party places. If they don't dance the traditional Jewish hora, they at
least manage a tarantella or an Irish jig.
"Parents will call us and say, 'My son's been to over 20 bar and bat
mitzvahs, and I just want to do something nice for him,' " says Paul Noto,
whose Carle
Place, N.Y., party entertainment company recently staged one such 13th
birthday party that cost $75,000 and included a tent with chandeliers, DJs and
dancers.
The parties can be upsetting to Jews who say they mock an important spiritual
rite of passage. Others call the trend a welcome example of Jewish traditions
becoming part of popular culture. "It shows how much the Jewish people and
Jewish customs have become mainstream," says Rabbi Mark S. Diamond, executive
vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.
A generation ago, when bar mitzvahs were simple affairs celebrated with a
glass of Manischewitz, the idea of a copycat rite wouldn't have occurred to
anybody. But, starting in the late 1960s, parties with themes became popular,
and
by the end of the '70s in some areas, competition was raging to make them ever
more elaborate.
The bar mitzvah is actually an ancient, solemn event marking the coming of
age of a Jewish male, undertaken after study of Jewish history, traditions and
Hebrew. Bat mitzvahs, for girls, are a more recent phenomenon. Typically,
children start intense preparations about a year before the event, spending
several
hours each week learning to read from the Torah -- the scroll containing the
Five Books of Moses -- and sometimes writing a speech and doing charity work.
After his daughter, Melissa, had attended a handful of bar mitzvahs a few
years ago, Kevin Williams decided to spend $12,000 to throw her a faux bat
mitzvah at a Manhattan hotel. About 150 people received invitations that read,
"Welcome to Melissa's Black Mitzvah.... Don't get offended, it's just her 13th
birthday party." There was a candle-lighting ceremony -- like those she had
seen
at some bar mitzvahs -- where the birthday girl's parents, friends, grandmother
and uncle were called up to light the candles on her cake. "After that party,
two more of her non-Jewish friends had them," says Mr. Williams.
At Hart to Hart, a party company in Woodland Hills, Calif., co-owner Marsha
Bliss says she organized more than a dozen parties last year for non-Jewish
13-year-olds whose parents requested bar mitzvah lookalikes, up from three in
2001. Daniel Rose of Montville, N.J., says he did seven or eight of these
parties
last year, up from two in 2001. In Roslyn, N.Y., NY Rhythm Entertainment has
booked about a dozen in the past two years and none before that.
Many rabbis are quick to point out that the parties have little in common
with the real thing. "Bar and bat mitzvahs are about accepting adult
responsibility in the community," says Rabbi Richard Block, senior rabbi of The
Temple-Tifereth Israel, in Cleveland. "If non-Jews are going to emulate their
Jewish
neighbors, better they emulate the enduring values of Jewish tradition than the
material excesses of contemporary life."
In Malibu, Calif., Danielle Davis, who is Catholic, asked her parents for a
bat mitzvah after attending several of her friends'. They explained to her the
true meaning of the ceremony as a Jewish coming-of-age rite. "She said, 'Some
of those things apply to me. I'm growing up and becoming a teenager. I should
have a party to celebrate,' " recalls her mother, Rebecca Walls.
"Of course the kids who had great bar mitzvah parties were elevated socially.
So we kind of felt a little bit of pressure to hold an event people would
remember," Ms. Walls adds. In the end, Danielle had a party, in February 2002,
at
a beachfront banquet hall with a Hawaiian surfing theme, a DJ and two
professional dancers.
Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at elizabeth(dot)bernstein (at) wsj(dot)com1
URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107404276295131300,00.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) mailto:elizabeth(dot)bernstein (at) wsj(dot)com
Updated January 14, 2004 11:39 a.m.
Copyright 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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