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noitacude suoigileR yM
becoming a man, with the help of a six-piece band, which would lead the guests in “Hava Nagila,” the bunny hop, and, don’t forget it, “The Alley Cat,” two photographers, an afternoon buffet followed by an eve- ning five-course dinner that would be preceded by the slicing of a three-foot-long challah (after the recitation of hamotzi, not “the” ham- otzi, the saying of which is akin to saying “the ATM machine”) and the drinking of the ceremonial Manischewitz wine (also preceded by the recitation of a berakhah [prayer]) and would be topped off with cham- pagne toasts that would be served by waiters with rolling bars and a four-foot-tall cake, on which would be lighted thirteen candles by thir- teen carefully selected people, pairs of people, or groups of people somehow related to me—I drove that evening with my parents to the Reform Progressive Synagogue at Ocean Avenue and Avenue I, not because we had decided to become Reform Jews and have yet another service to honor the occasion of my bar mitzvah, but because my mother had concluded that the Progressive was where the “affair” belonged, as the caterer at the Progressive was far superior to the caterer at the East Midwood.
And my mother saw what she had made, and, behold, she said that it was good.
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