Bar Mitzvah Memories: Today I Am A (Snow)Man

A powerful Nor’easter almost wiped out my big day.

The author, many eons ago. Does this look like a ‘man,’ braces and all?

 

 

Dear Reader,

I wasn’t planning to post a second column this week – if you missed my piece “Carl Bernstein Owes Me $20,” click here. But when I realized that this Shabbat, Parshat Terumah, marks the anniversary of my long-ago bar mitzvah, I decided to share with you some remembrances of that special day. 

But I warn you they are not for the faint-hearted…

I don’t have to tell you that a bar mitzvah is that rite of passage in Jewish life that occurs at 13, the precise age when a boy is most awkward – puberty, braces, acne, voice changing, shyness – and calls upon him to deliver a speech before a large audience in what may well be the biggest solo public performance of one’s life. Plus sing and chant in a foreign language. (And the same goes for bat mitzvahs for 12-year-old girls.)

What were our sages thinking?

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of my bar mitzvah is snow. Not just any snow but a Nor’easter that dumped more than 20 inches of heavy, wet snow on much of the East Coast, including Annapolis, MD, on the Thursday before the Shabbat of my big day.

Which brings me to the first emotion that comes to mind, looking back: guilt. That’s because, as I was often reminded in ensuing years, my parents had to pay the caterer for dozens of uneaten luncheon meals since so many guests, including almost all of my out of town relatives and classmates from Baltimore, couldn’t make it.

But it really wasn’t my fault.

I’d like to say that my bar mitzvah was a spiritual experience, becoming a man, or at least an adult in terms of Jewish law, reaching the age of responsibility for one’s own mitzvot and sins. But I couldn’t even reach the lectern on the bimah to deliver my two speeches – one in English and a pilpul, or Talmudic disputation, in Yiddish, for the benefit of my Yiddish-speaking grandparents. It’s hard to think of becoming a man when you’re barely five feet tall and have to stand on a box. 

As for performing in front of a packed shul, with the additional pressure of being the rabbi’s son, I took some comfort in my older brother’s reminding me how few congregants would know if I made a mistake in either my Yiddish speech or in reading the Torah and Haftorah in Hebrew – with no vowels or cantillation notes. 

What were those sages thinking?

The portion of Terumah consists of a detailed description of God’s instructions on building the Tabernacle that would accompany the Israelites during their long sojourn in the desert. There is profound meaning in the notion that, according to Maimonides, God wanted to wean the people from the idolatry they practiced in Egypt and give them a constant reminder that God was with them. 

But after the fascinating stories of our forefathers and mothers in Genesis and the drama of fleeing Egypt in Exodus, Terumah marks the end of the narrative in the Book of Exodus and, with the exception of the story of the Golden Calf, the remaining chapters are devoted to the details of the Tabernacle’s construction.

And there are a lot of details. Some people may have an interest in acacia wood and knops and tongs and candlesticks and snuffdishes and the number of clasps and loops required for the curtains (spoiler alert: the answer is 50), but when practicing the Torah reading, I focused on getting through it without profound embarrassment. 

Unlike the memorable service I’d attended a couple of years before when the bar mitzvah boy, who later became the local mayor, stopped in the middle of his Haftorah and announced, “I need a glass of water.”

I hope I didn’t give my English speech in the cadence that bar mitzvah boys seem to have in their genes, the uniquely annoying sing-song delivery that signals a great distance from emotion, the result of having practiced the speech so many times it becomes devoid of meaning.

Perhaps more interesting was my pilpul, though few would know besides my Bubbe and Zaidy. It was given to me to deliver by the rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva I attended in Baltimore. It was a discourse and debate between the rabbis on whether or not one is permitted to sleep while wearing tefillin. 

The topic seems fitting in this case for two opposite reasons. One was that my Zaidy, a learned rabbi, often sat in his tefillin both early in the morning and late at night poring over the pages of the Talmud, so I suppose there was a chance he might have fallen asleep at times, though I doubt it. 

The less charming and more practical reason could have applied to me. During the week, I lived with my grandparents in Baltimore to attend yeshiva, and I was often called on to help make the minyan in the morning at my Zaidy’s shul, which happened to be on the first floor of their home. I slept in the attic and would be summoned by a very loud buzzer when they needed a tenth man. So there was a solid chance I might nod off during the service, with my tefillin on.

In the end, despite the snow and the missing relatives and friends, my bar mitzvah day gave me a sense of pride of accomplishment and warm memories of feeling surrounded by my loving family and congregants who knew me from birth.

But there’s always the lingering guilt … Many years later, on a visit home, I was greeted by an older woman I hadn’t seen in many years. “I never made it to your bar mitzvah,” she reminded me, not for the first time. “I was walking to shul but I fell on the ice and broke my leg,” she said. “But I remember your bris.”

Ah, the bris. 

What were our sages thinking?