On Excess

This weekend, my parents, K and I flew down to Boca Raton to attend my second cousin's bar mitzvah. (A bar mitzvah, or bat mitzvah for girls, is a ceremony held the first time a Jewish boy is called to the Torah, typically at age 13. Like a Catholic confirmation ceremony, it symbolizes an entry into an adult faith. The bar mitzvah is now responsible for his own actions and his own life, spiritual and otherwise.)

A bit of background information: my cousin, mother of the new bar mitzvah, was a department head at a major New York financial concern, accumulated all the money she could handle, and left the company and the city to adopt children and get married (in that order). She bought herself a house in Florida, near her parents, and then bought one for her sister and brother-in-law for good measure. She's a lovely, talented, generous woman. With a ton of money.

Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised that the bar mitzvah party she threw her oldest son was as elaborate as it was--my other cousin's husband, at brunch the day after, assured us archly that "for Florida, that was tasteful," that he had dropped his son off at a bar mitzvah that had gladiators in real chariots pulled by real horses standing outside the gates--but I have to say, I was surprised. And a little shocked.

There were cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to start, along with a magician and a video karaoke booth for the kids, and then we moved into the "grand ballroom" (note, please, that these amenities are built into the synagogue), where we find a cover band, hired crowd-riling dancers, an emcee, three videographers, two photographers, video screens playing slideshows of family photos, the bar mitzvah boy's name emblazoned hugely in lights, and four-foot rotating centerpieces on every table. Not to speak of the long, dormant buffet and the seared beef and cucumber salad appetizers already laid out at the adults' place settings.

Now, I've been to some big bar and bat mitzvahs. I have. Between the ages of 12 and 14, I probably went to 25, and some of them were big things, and some of them had hired dancers, and some of them had bands and some had centerpieces (though I don't think any of them had centerpieces like these centerpieces), but as I can recall, none of them had all of those things.

Then there was a brunch the next day, smaller, more intimate, but still probably fifty people at my cousin's house. Under her twenty-foot ceilings sprawled a catered buffet spread, hired omelet-makers making omelets to order at her beautiful stainless stove, and a guy in uniform working an espresso machine and a wet bar, giving out his business card for pet parties.

Now, my own bat mitzvah party was at my parents' apartment. We cleared out the furniture, hired a DJ and a fortune teller, and had a catered buffet. Guests took photos with disposable cameras, and my mom and I made an album of the photos afterwards. I had all my relatives, a few friends from my old school, a few friends from my new school, and a few friends from my Hebrew school class. I had a really wonderful time. It wasn't an inexpensive party, but I can't imagine my parents spent as much as many parents at the time did (let alone anything like what was spent on last weekend's extravaganza), and it wasn't as lavish, somehow.

What I like about the way we did my bat mitzvah is that it was somehow suited to the tone of the day. My memories of my bat mitzvah are dominated by the events of the ceremony: being up on the bima, chanting my Torah and Haftorah portions, my rabbi and my parents making speeches about me. Most of all I remember my sister, who was nine, saying the nicest thing about me that anyone has ever said, before or since. The party is a total blur. I don't remember a damn thing. But I like the idea that my family and my friends walked from the synagogue to my parents' house and celebrated with us in our home. It feels intimate, which seems appropriate.

The bar or bat mitzvah ceremony is about coming into responsibility for one's life. It's the beginning of agency. For this reason, young people preparing for their ceremonies traditionally do a tzedakah, or social service, project (my cousin was no exception), to demonstrate their commitment to their spiritual and social obligations. To couple such a ceremony with such a lavish party, a thing so unmoored from day-to-day life, seems strange to me, seems like insufficient attention is being paid to the meaning of the ceremony itself--its message about responsibility for oneself and for others.

But, like my cousin's husband reminded me, it's Florida. And the parties are given by the parents, really, and the parents are subject, perhaps more than their children, to an awareness of social norms. That awareness is hard to buck--my own aversion to a party of this magnitude is as much about finding it sort of overwhelming and a bit tacky (both related to my own, different sense of social norms) as it is about the cognitive dissonance between the occasion and its celebration. I don't know if that cognitive dissonance would be as strong for someone who didn't find the party itself outside the realm of their experience.

On the other hand, is it even reasonable for such a party to be within the realm of people's normal experience? Especially thirteen-year-olds' experience? What call is there for this kind of thing? It's not that I'm against luxury. I'm definitely not. But this party does not represent the kind of luxury I like. Maybe if it's your kind of luxury, this feels the way that a nice trip or a great dinner feels to me--something that you give yourself because you can, but wouldn't do every day.

I keep chewing on this thing without coming to a conclusion. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know that I can figure out what to make of it, really, other than concluding that it's not my kind of thing, and that says something about the kind of person I am, but more different than better. The whole thing just kind of blew my mind a bit.