At this very moment, a suseptible 11-year-old Jewish boy is being shammed by his parents. They are conning him about his Bar Mitzvah— the Jewish rite of passage into manhood when reaching his thirteenth birthday. I know this, because there’s little difference between 2021 and that morning in 1964 at age eleven when my parents summoned me to the kitchen.
Mom sat at the dinette wearing a fluffy pink terry-cloth robe, her head turban-wrapped in toilet paper and covered with a pale-blue shower cap to secure spiky white rollers. Dad wore a white tee shirt tucked into blue dungarees, brown leatherette house shoes, and black socks.
“Come, sit down mein Brian-del,” Mom said. “Now that you’re a big boy of eleven, your dad and I have something important to tell you about.”
Shit, they’re going to talk to me about how babies are made.
The kitchen lights supplemented glaring morning sunlight. I squinted as if sitting under a blaring floor lamp being grilled by Dragnet’s Joe Friday.
“You’ll be starting Hebrew school this summer preparing for your Bar Mitzvah in two years,” Dad said patting my hand resting on the table.
Yep, here comes the schtupping talk.
“And you know what that means?” Mom grinned and tilted her head, bobbling huddled curlers. “You’re a man.”
Bracing for gross specifics describing ins and outs of male and female genitalia, my chin dropped when Dad said, “And that means it’s time for us to tell you what you can expect when you turn thirteen and have your Bar Mitzvah.”
While I had dodged the sex talk bullet, here’s the shameless scam my parents—all Jewish parents for that matter—conned me with, a.k.a. The Five Bar Mythvahs.
The Top Five Bar Mythvahs:
1. “You’ll love preparing for your Bar Mitzvah at Hebrew school.”
2. “We’re going to throw a big party for you and all your friends.”
3. “You’ll get fabulous gifts.”
4. “You are now a man.”
5. “Now that you’re a man, you can make your own decisions.”
Bar Mythvah #1: “You’ll love preparing for your Bar Mitzvah at Hebrew school.”
Bullshit. It’s all lies.
At eleven-years old, I began my two-year sentence in Hebrew school—a.k.a. the Lambshank Redemption. A mandated punishment involving two hours every week after school memorizing a passage from the Old Testament…very long…in Hebrew…with top-secret musical inflection symbols written above the words and known only to the cantor and millions of permanently scarred boys plagued with little to no rhythm and pre-testicle-drop squeaky voices. Then, after twenty-four months of emotional scourging by a cantor who looked a bit too much like Hannibal Lechter, there’s the final humiliation of chanting—more like pig hollering—my Haftorah in front of a standing-room-only synagogue. That’s when I’d supposedly appreciate having endured incarceration.
Bar Mythvah #2: “We’re going to throw a big party for you and all your friends.”
What a pile of dog crap..
That big party for all my friends? Me and two friends sitting at a table by the kitchen and twenty tables for my parents’ 200 invitees. The pièce de résistance featured a four-foot-long glass trough overflowing with fist-sized shrimp piled high around a giant Star-of-David ice sculpture. Seeing those innocent prawn families drowned in a sea of cocktail sauce, led to nightmares of murdered crustaceans being sucked from the safety of their shells and swallowed by trolling party whales.
Bar Mythvah #3: “You’ll get fantastic gifts.”
What a crock of shit.
Anticipating a new bike or stereo, I got two Cross pen and pencil sets (I wasn’t allowed to take them to school—they remained in a drawer till I rediscovered them at age thirty-five), about $500 in cash and checks (I never saw any of it), and $150 in savings bonds (which me and my two friends knew sucked, because (1) the tight-ass paid half price for its face value, and (2) you may forget about it or not make it to age forty-three when the bond finally matures).
Bar Mythvah #4: “You are now a man.”
Maybe in Moses’s house; not mine.
Most male Jews rejoice after the “You’re a man now” rabbinical blessing, anticipating adult-only sexual adventures opening up like a hot pastrami sandwich. Instead, I struggled for years understanding why becoming a man was not immediately associated with having sex. And kept sneaking my dad’s Playboy magazines from his bedside table.
Bar Mythvah #5: Now that I’m a man, my path is mine to choose
Give me a break.
Most Jewish men enter college pursuing their mother’s mandate to secure a medical or law degree—defiantly, many end up as comedians and discount jewelers. After graduation, anxiety increases with the mom’s next question: “So, when are you going to marry a nice Jewish girl?” Those who knuckle under and marry spend several decades struggling to understand why marrying a nice Jewish girl is not immediately associated with having sex. After standing under the chuppah and crushing the wineglasses underfoot, we are expected to move into the time-honored and blissful Jewish family life. This involves buying a house and car we can’t afford, having kids for the grandparents to spoil, snipping foreskins while singing “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof, and asking our parents not to drop by unannounced, which invariably occurs on those rare occasions when having sex.
So what?
It’s too late for me, but not for you parents with pre-Bar Mitzvah boys. It’s bad enough we had to suffer schmeckledectomies when we were mere babes and mistakenly placed our teeny weenies in our parents’ trusting hands. So cruel.
To those Jewish parents with young male children: You have this one chance for redemption before your 11-year-old boy becomes a teenager, realizes he’s been hoodwinked, extorted, and that he’ll be masturbating most of his life. Come clean. Re-earn their trust. Forget your self-centered gratuitous party. Give them the cash. Keep the fucking pens.