A Bar Mitzvah before Unicycling

Just to tell you up front, this post has NOTHING to do with unicycling except that after we attended the bar mitzvah in question, we raced up to Manhattan for the uni club. Oh, and one other connection, but I'll save that for last.

THE INVITATION
Our good friends sent us an invite to their eldest son's bar mitzvah. The invitations didn't have an RSVP, and they were sent only two or three weeks ahead of the big day. More interestingly, the date of the ceremony was slated for January 1, 2006. We thought it was a typo -- maybe they meant January 11? And it was 9 am. Now it had to be a typo. Who would schedule a big event for the morning after most people stay up drinking till all hours?

I called the boy's mom, and she let me in on a few secrets. The 9 am start was a bit of a ruse just to get would-be late-comers to the synagog on time. She told us to get there by 9:45 the earliest. In fact, the prayers didn't really begin till just before 10. There was no RSVP because most of the people in their tight-knit community would know about the Bar Mitzvah, and most would be there anyway -- no reason to give out phone numbers. OK, but was it a typo?

THE DATE
The date was considered quite lucky for two reasons. As it was during a secular holiday (New Years), most people would have the day off and the next day as well, so there would be no difficulty having relatives fly in and out for the bar mitzvah. More importantly, the date chosen was during Hanukah, a happy holiday, and therefore an auspicious day to become a man. It was also the same day as my unicycle club was slated to meet, so we planned to attend the ceremony and part of the party and then rush to Grant's Tomb for the club.

THE SEATING
Shirra had run downstairs to the Ladies with Maeve, so I told Fiona and Emmett to enter the shul on their own and to save seats. This proved impossible, and both kids came back looking confused. There were plenty of seats left, so I took them in and sat them with me near the middle of the temple in the front row. Unlike any other house of worship I've ever seen, this one had most of the activity happening in the wide center aisle (like the nave of a church) right in front of the torahs but about 100 feet away. Pretty soon I noticed (finally) that there were no women in my section. Aha! I had forgotten that in orthodox temples, the sexes are separate. When Shirra returned, she entered one of the women's sections with Maeve while Emmett stayed with me, which was lucky because I could answer most of his many whispered questions and keep him interested.

THE CEREMONY
It began with the rabbi shushing the crowd. Immediately we were immersed in the language of my ancestors. I had grabbed a prayer book, but it was 99.44% Hebrew, so it didn't do me much good. I took note of the page from the people seated around me, mainly kids from Isaac's class. As I tried to follow along, it looked like were were going to read most of the book's 600 pages, but since the rabbi was reciting the prayers with the speed of an auctioneer, I guessed that this might not take too long. In fact, after about 20 pages of straight reading, the torah was brought out from its altar. This signaled that Isaac was about to read from it for the first time as a man, and also that the service was nearly over. He did a magificent job, sounding every bit as good as the rabbi (Isaac speaks Hebrew fluently). The next time we all picked up our prayer books, we were in the 400s. Shortly after this, Isaac stood up for his speech.

THE WOMEN
I noticed that the women's section was pretty noisy -- lots of chattering. Fiona confirmed this later: "They never shut up." On at least three occasions, the rabbi shushed the crowd, but the only noise was coming from the women's section. I was impressed how quiet were the dozens of adolescent boys around me, especially compared to the ladies diagonally across from us. I commented on this to 6-year-old Emmett, and he replied, "Yeah, they're not being very respectful." Later I realized that none of them have had a bat mitzvah -- it's simply not done in their community (unlike the Conservative and Reform Jewish communities), so perhaps they feel a bit disenfranchised or unconnected to some of the prayers.

THE SPEECH
Isaac gave the best bar mitzvah speech I have ever heard. In addition to being a born orator, the message of his words was spellbinding. He thanked each member of his family personally for something specific that person had done to help him become a man. He talked about how each of his elder male relatives had wrapped some of the leather strip of the tfillin around his arm and how in doing so, each one had infused some of his life into Isaac's. Oy -- I was kvelling. If ever a boy truly became a man at 13, it was Isaac.

THE PARTY
I thought my wedding had great food and a lovely location, but this party was stupendous. The lower level of the temple, like the temple itself, had two separate areas. One was clearly the place to sit, eat, dance, and schmooze. The other was mainly for kids and was replete with a mini-basketball shooting area and other games, caricature drawing, candy galore for a make-your-own-loot-bag, and a few other special treats. In the hallway between were dozens of pastries and healthy fruits, all of it delicious. The visual theme of the event was an Andy Warhol-like photo-painting of Isaac (like the one Warhol did of Marilyn Monroe). To complement this, there were Isaac cookies, Isaac cake, and Isaac chotchkes, all done in that same Warhol style, but none of it 'over the top' -- it was just right.

When I had my bar mitzvah 25 years ago, it was a bit different. I had a lovely service (during which my brother failed to make me laugh by making faces at me), but it was sparsely attended because I have a tiny family and went to a small school. There were more people smooshed into the photo of Isaac's family than were at my bar mitzvah. I read from the torah, but really I had just memorized the passage earlier and was reciting it while glancing at Hebrew letters I could barely read. And while Isaac understood everything he was reading, I had only vague notions of what each passage was about rather than each word. Finally, Isaac's party outrivaled my own fantastic wedding; when I was 13, our smallish group all met later at a fancy restaurant called Sardi's (in the NYC theater district) and chatted merrily at the tables. It was more of an affair than a party.

THE CONNECTION to UNI'ING
So how is this in any way related to unicycling. Well, when all was said and done, I recived a total of about $700 from friends and rellies for my bar mitzvah, and while this was relatively low even in my day, it was enough for me to buy a few fun 'toys.' I got myself a cool phone (long since broken) and a 32-person speed dialer (why?) and a telescope that I enjoyed for a few years despite the poor visability of the NYC sky. And with my last $100, I bought my first Schwinn unicycle. But I got more than $10 change when I got that unicycle. I got a hobby that would last me a lifetime and which would connect me to hundreds of cool people I might not have met otherwise, like you.

And If you look in the middle of my tattoo, you'll see at the bottom of the seat post a slightly odd shape. That is the Hebrew letters for 'chai' ("life"), and it's symbolic of my bar mitzvah-unicycle connection.