We just celebrated our son’s bar mitzvah, our third so far, and I have been thinking about why people do what they do and sometimes go overboard. Everyone knows that  boys (or girls) becomes of age just by turning 13 (or 12), and while some recommend a communal meal on the boy’s birthday, the minimum observance involves putting on tefillin (phylacteries) and getting called up to the Torah for the first time. Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, the rosh yeshiva of the Petach Tikva hesder yeshiva, described how his mother invited his friends for herring and cookies on the evening of his birthday.

There are three main difficulties when planning bar and bat mitzvahs: Parents’ friends, child’s friends, and grandparents and extended family have different needs; observant Jews don’t drive on Shabbat; and in Israel, Sunday is an ordinary work day.

The following are examples of celebrations in Israeli religious circles. It’s common to have more than one:

• In religious Zionist circles, the bar mitzvah boy may read all or part of the week’s Torah portion in the synagogue.
• Celebrating the first time putting on Tefillin. Traditions vary, but most boys begin putting on phylacteries thirty days before their thirteenth birthdays. This becomes an opportunity to celebrate on a weekday. Some do it at the kotel or in school, with anything ranging from light refreshments to a full restaurant meal with a band.
• Calling the boy up to the Torah at a weekday synagogue (or private) service. If your date falls near Chanukah or a Friday Rosh Chodesh (the weekend starts Friday here) then you are in luck.
• Mid-week evening event with a sit-down dinner, a band or DJ, photographer, etc.
• Shabbat in a hotel or guest house. Typically the extended family is invited along with a limited number of friends without their children. I heard of one case where the hosts refused to allow even a two-month old to attend as they felt it would disturb the atmosphere. Some find that if you cut your guest list somewhat this comes out cheaper than a Shabbat at home, once you include meals, accommodations, a kiddush and a mid-week function.
• An activity for the bar mitzvah boy’s friends. This may include a hike or visit to place of interest, and relatives and friends may also be included.
• Hosting the relatives for Shabbat in your community, hoping you can find enough places for them to sleep.
• Making a function on Shabbat such as a kiddush, sit-down meal, or Friday night dessert.
• Saturday evening events are nothing new here, but Havdalah ceremonies are now a trend in the US.

And there are many variations.

There are valid reasons for making “fancy” bar mitzvahs. While we might wish people would tone it down, we only have power over our own decisions.

What about your child? If you can only afford to make a modest affair when your son’s friends are making huge bashes, he will understand. But if you choose to save on this event when you normally spend lavishly on vacations, he may not see things in the same light.

For our recent bar mitzvah we decided to focus on the family Shabbat. We were going to have a mid-week dinner, but cancelled even though we had already printed invitations. The reasons we skipped it:

• Time of year. There are about a dozen weddings this month from our community alone (no, we’re not invited to most of them), and it’s vacation time as well. I told my son that it’s unlikely the parents of his schoolfriends from neighboring towns would be available for driving. As for his local friends, we found out that a good friend held his party on the same night.
• It just seemed like too much on top of hosting 37 for Shabbat and holding a kiddush in shul. And even though I did most of the cooking and set up the kiddush, Shabbat did not come out cheap.
• My son’s birthday fell on Shabbat.
• The only grandparent to attend was my father-in-law, who was not interested in any kind of dinner. But grandparents can put a lot of pressure on a family.
  The flip side of making aliyah without parents, or not having them around (our mothers died years ago, and my father cannot make the trip). You suffer from the distance and lack of support, but are freer to do things the way you want.

The disadvantage of not having a mid-week event was having to exclude relatives and out-of-town friends. They always make the effort to attend and invite us to their own smachot, and it’s a rare opportunity to see them. Well, you can’t have everything.

You don’t have to make a huge event just to invite people back. We invited out-of-towners to the dinners we held for our two older sons. Weddings may not be far off  so we can invite everyone then. Anyway, if going to a simcha will obligate you to reciprocate you probably shouldn’t go in teh first place.

We felt a lot of pressure to have a mid-week event. Even our haredi relatives have a dinner or some kind of open house. The only ones who don’t, it seems, are the ones who go away to a hotel. I pointed this out to my son, because he was not invited to his friends’ hotel bar mitzvahs.

At the end of the day you need to be comfortable with your choice. Sometimes it’s important to do what your community is doing, but overspending and overdoing adds no joy to the celebration.

Whatever you do, focus on your child, the family and guests, and the significance of the bar mitzvah.

Mazal tov!

Rabbi Cherlow wants to make Orthodox synagogues more female-friendly.

Yael Mishali (see here for a previous mention) earns ire and admiration when she writes about the joys of large families.

Kosher Bride shares wisdom on cooking, wedding planning, and more from the Upper East Side.

One Tired Ema is blogging about her upcoming aliyah.

Vicki Boykis from Washington, DC blogs about Bride Kidnapping, American vs. Russian Dating, and more.

Leora posts the Pictorial Edition of the Kosher Cooking Carnival, full of mouth-watering photographs and recipes.

And last but not least, the  Harry Potter Edition of Haveil Havalim is up at Jack’s.

Shabbat shalom!

The shul had a program for preschoolers. My 12-year-old son was with my youngest, but called me to take over so he could go into shul; my daughter didn’t want to stay by herself. After a while he came back and offered to take over during the drasha. After confirming that he wished to return for mussaf, I told him I would stay with her. I missed the end of shul but since I sat from barchu through the bar-mitzvah boy’s clear and confident rendition of the parsha and haftara, I can’t complain. Before going back up my son offered me some of the Hershey’s chocolate he had collected from the candy-throwing. (I still have some; don’t tell my kids.) Now that’s what I call kibud em (honoring your mother).

My husband picked us up at around 5 (he didn’t mind all the walking) and we stopped by an old friend, who sat with us in a park and walked us back to where we were staying. My 4yo napped in my husband’s arms most of the way. When we arrived I was too tired even to walk up the stairs, so I waited on a bench until we walked back to brother-in-law 2 for seudah shlishit.

Brother-in-law 1′s apartment was spacious and accommodating. His landlords live in the US and only use it for vacations. We appreciate the fact that both of the brothers are renting in such a great location and seemed happy for us to “invade” for Shabbat. And I haven’t mentioned the other old friends we met in shul and over meals.
The air was pleasant, the neighborhoods are charming, and the view of the bridge at night, as we approached the exit from Jerusalem, is breathtaking. I foced myself to remember the pleasures of winter in the Tel Aviv area. . . .

Check out Haveil Havalim #175 over here.

(Unfortunately, the bar mitzvah speaker who originally told this joke concluded by saying that the bar mitzvah boy was also no chazan, but had other wonderful qualities!)

S.L. asked me for my opinion on the subject. I’m happy to oblige.

While I agree that grandparents should not have a role in their children’s decisions regarding daycare, diet, and discipline, smachot (life-cycle celebrations) belong in a different category. The simcha belongs to the grandparents too! Also, they are one-time events. While the final decision ultimately lies with the parents making the simcha, if they can easily make the grandparents happy without compromising their principles I believe they should make the effort. For instance, if the grandparents want to hire a fancier caterer or invite more guests and they are willing to pay (or the parents can do so without a major financial sacrifice), the parents should consider going along with it for the sake of peace. The parents can make it clear that they are not setting a precedent for future events. If they decide not to, the son or daughter, not the son or daughter-in-law, should be the one to explain things. Anyway, as the grandparents get older they are less likely to be as involved in these types of details (unfortunately).

I’m not referring to cases where the demands are far removed from the standards of the community, nor unhealthy situations where the in-laws are trying to control the young couple, sabotage the marriage, or one-up the other grandparents.

These things can be explained to children old enough to understand. I told mine that most of the “material” preparations for the Bar Mitzvah were to make sure that the guests felt welcome and would want to come next time, and that they (the children) also needed to do what they could to achieve this by being extra cheerful and cooperative. When we take the tastes of grandparents into account we make them feel part of things, and we model respect for parents.

To a lesser degree we try to take the needs of other relatives into account too. When families fight, they often bring up examples of slights from family occasions. They put us in a cheap hotel, they sat us next to that couple we hate, they didn’t include us in the pictures. Are they being gracious guests? No. Do we want our children to have a relationship with such relatives and their children later on in life? Is it worth gritting our teeth and compromising some of the time? Can we go out of our way to be extra gracious hosts when we make a simcha, according to our means? Worth considering.