TINY’S "BAR MITZVAH EXPRESS“

Some things about Judaism have gotten better and others worse. Then there are those that have stayed the same in the half-century since my childhood.

Take the Bar/Bat Mitzvah celebration. My father was a postal clerk, so we were poor compared to the Jews who lived nearby. In 1963, my Bar Mitzvah consisted of a Kiddush after schule to which my parents invited 40 relatives.

But friends who lived in greater affluence did not simply have Bar Mitzvah parties, but extravaganzas – A hotel ballroom. An orchestra, chanteuse, and master of ceremonies. A bacchanalia of hors d’ouvres, martinis, and dinner. A candle-lighting ceremony to honor special guests. A machine popping popcorn. Personalized tee-shirts reading, “I Overate at Scottie’s Bar Mitzvah.

An occasional Bar Mitzvah celebrant would later rebel against his parents’ values by becoming a political radical or a Lubavitcher. The vast majority embraced their parents’ ways and are now, in 2006, honoring their progeny with the same decadence.

Having spent 35 years in the rabbinate, it still never ceases to amaze me. Should a rabbi attend? I confess that I frequently am present, in part out of morbid curiosity, and in part because I get to drink good Scotch.

Just recently, I conducted the Bar Mitzvah of a boy fondly known as “Tiny,” because of his 140-kilo girth. Tiny’s performance from the bima was rotten. But who cares? In front of the schule was parked a bus to take the kids to the party, emblazoned with, “Tiny’s Bar Mitzvah Express,”

The Shabbos-afternoon decadence began: shrimp on ice, cheese rolled in salami, bacon-wrapped filet mignon. The band played, the chanteuse sang, the master of ceremonies cracked offensive jokes.

Finally, silence fell upon the crowd. It was time for the candle-lighting ceremony. Instead, the master of ceremonies dolefully intoned, “With regrets, we will refrain from the candle-lighting ritual, in order to properly honor the holy Sabbath.”

Whether the traumatized Tiny will ever become a Lubavitcher who observes “the holy Sabbath” is anyone’s guess. But this I do know: At the very moment of the aborted candle-lighting, God was sitting on a rock, eating a cheeseburger, and declaring, “They just don’t get it, do they?”

IT’S HARD TO BE A JEW . . . ON SUNDAY

Any time I have the opportunity to escape my highly-gentile hometown of Greenville to visit New York, it is as if I were on a pilgrimage to the Holy Wall in Jerusalem. New York’s plethora of outstanding, or at least passable, kosher restaurants is a special treat for gluttons like me who lives to eat.

But, this time, that wonderful experience of brisket, pastrami, and falafel was overshadowed by attempting to buy a Coke and and a snack on my way back to the airport that Sunday.

Ah, behold the telephone-booth sized joint across the Yeshiva campus. As I enter the place, I realize that it is simply a dump that observes kashrut. Strutting up to the counter, I behold a rack of pizzas festooned with green pepper. But oy, green pepper hurts my stomach.

I assume – wouldn’t you? – that a simple cheese pizza would also be available at a dive across from Yeshiva University, touting itself as Yahkel’s Pizza. No, they inform me, all the cheese pizzas were frozen before Shabbos and would take at least a half-hour to thaw.

Oy.

“OK, then let me have a salad.” The menu says that I have my choice of between “iceberg” lettuce and “mixed greens.” As a gourmand in training, I select the mixed greens. The server brings them to the counter, but then proceeds to chop three heads of iceberg lettuce and adds huge amounts of it into a huge bowl to accompany three or four puny leaves if raddichio and arugula. Without apology, he tells me that the other bags of greens had spoiled because they were “left over from before Shabbos.”

Oy.

“OK. the menu says I get a selection of toppings for my salad. I’ll have the ‘fresh albacore tuna’.” But I see that the tuna bears a dark brown crust, making it look like cat food. “Is that fresh albacore?” I ask. “It was,” he says, “but that was before Shabbos.”

Oy.

“Then give me the black olives.”

“You should know that we mix them with the green ones before Shabbos.”

Oy.

“Then what about the sweet red peppers?” But I already know the answer: You can’t light Shabbos candles until the you’ve mixed the red and green ones together.

Then I ask for falafel . . . but you already know the answer: The grinder broke, so we couldn’t grind the chickpeas, and you know that we couldn’t get it fixed on Shabbos.

Oy vey.

“How about a cup of coffee.”

“You want cream with that?” I nod in the affirmative. “Sorry, all we have is black because we haven’t had a delivery from the dairy since before Shabbos.”

Oy again.

“What about a can of “Coke?”

“I hope that you like regular, because we weren’t here on Shabbos to get a delivery of Diet.”

Noch a mohl oy.

A cup of coffee with real cream at Starbucks in the airport would have to suffice until I got back home. Now Greenville wasn’t looking so bad. I daydreamt about my flight back. Ah, Greenville, where black and green olives come from separate jars and you can get fresh milk seven days a week. On my return, I lustily ate mixed greens and white albacore tuna at a treifeh restaurant, and I washed it all down with a cup of creamery-rich half-and-half-enhanced cup of real coffee. The restaurant will remain unnamed.

Oy, a mechayeh!

The next time I returned to New York, it was for my kids’ wedding at the rococo catering hall, Razag, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. For that joyous occasion I had the chutzpa to tell the machatonim that they might do whatever they please, even the garish smorgasbord. But this I begged them: not to have the wedding too soon after Shabbos, so that at least the pizza will be hot and the Diet Coke cold.

BLAND AND THE BOYS

Linda is the perfect Rebbetzin. Had I been a chef, we would have visited divorce court. I call Linda a “selective anorexic,” who will not eat the foods that I adore. Her bland tastes have fallen into the hell created by a husband who lives by chili pepper and Geschmorte Rindszunge.

Sushi is slimy fish, so we don’t eat Japanese together. Mexican food reeks of cilantro, so we do not venture south of the border. Indian? The odor of cumin is too strong. Thai? Too spicy. German? Ach du lieber! Too rich!

What should I do if my wife refuses ceviche and considers meat loaf haute cuisine? Without her cooperation, who might enjoy sampling my offerings in Greenville, a town so backward that a fancy dinner means pizza?

But, there is a tidbit of good fortune for us. In this ultra-conservative town, we have the mazal of living next door to one of the few gay couples in the county. We simply call them “the boys,” and they will eat anything that I serve and take home the rest. They call me “the food pimp.”

They have their own rating system: how much my creations resemble their goische counterparts: “Ah, the chopped liver might as well be pate de foie. The cholent is better than cassoulet. The apfel schalent surpasses any American apple pie.”

There are, of course, foods so noxious that even the boys refuse them. They will never try pitscha just by looking at it: Viscous, grainy, and that disgusting cow’s foot. Spinach borscht looks like . . . well, you know what it looks like. A gelatinous pickled fish head is just creepy.

I have taught the boys many Jewish words in the process: milchig, pareve, kugel, gefilte fish, matzo balls. They love trying to say words when I invite to dinner: “This kishke is wonderful! The kugel is simply divine!”

One Shabbos I decided to bake a special challah for them. They looked at it, sniffed and announced, “Berches? We thought that only Yekkes ate that! Aren’t you an Ostjude? Next you’ll be feeding us Bohnen-Suppe! What’s wrong with you?”

THE GANGSTA BOCHUR EXTREME MAKEOVER

Have you ever noticed how many no-brainers need an Einstein to figure them out? Let’s not talk about mega-no-brainers like the debacle in Iraq. Instead, let’s talk about a really dumb no-brainer (you’ll pardon the redundancy) on the near-and-dear Jewish home-front:

People have forgotten how to dress their kids – and themselves – when they come to schule.

My peeve transitions to full-blown rant when I go to schule on Shabbos and hear Shmerel squeaking out Ashrai to rehearse for his Bar Mitzvah. Mom and dad sit in their places as Shmerele reluctantly shuffles up to the bimah in grubby tee-shirt, faded jeans below his pupik, and oversized Nikes.

At first, I thought it was just Shmerel’s slack-jawed “why-are-you-bothering-me-this-is-a-waste-of-time” indifference that galled me. Regarding that, the rabbi and his parents should give him a swift dose of attitude adjustment and tell him to straighten up and fly right.

Then I realized that Shmerel’s his hip-hop uniform was as annoying as his attitude. Each Shabbos, Linda has to restrain me from asking his parents why they let the kid out of the house looking like a rapper. That would be too embarrassing and just not nice.

As a guy who always wears a suit to schule and has seen that his kids do the same, I would say, “If he visited church with a friend, you and I know that you would make sure that he dressed appropriately. And I daresay that his church-going friends would already know what to wear to synagogue.”

What else would I say?

I’d say, “My parents insisted that I wear Shabbosdik clothes to schule as a rite of passage when I started first grade of Sunday school. To this day, my regard for the honor of schule and Shabbos derives in large measure from that guidance. I went on to become a rabbi, and when I left the rabbinate, at least it was not due to my attire.”

Wait a minute. I apologize for boasting about my lifelong commitment to the appropriate rabbinical dress-code. Noop. I did go through a period as most rabbis do, of believing that I would bridge the gap between me and my younger congregants by becoming “Rabbi Skippy,” just one of the boys, jeans and work-shirt, even to the office. Wrong. As much as a rabbi’s credibility rises and falls on his menschlichkeit and scholarship, we also weigh it by the dignity with which he presents himself. Thus the words of one of my mentors: “You need not become like them in order to influence them.” Had I only listened to his sage advice sooner.

I recently attended a meeting at which a friend peevedly told me that his rabbi attended a bris in a work-shirt and khakis. Known for his candor, I asked my friend how he responded. “I told him,” he said, “that a rabbi should dress like a rabbi!”
I know. You will say that this rant is just the crankiness of a crabby man on his way to old age. Possibly. But, think about it this way: We buy our kids the most extravagant tallesim and the most ornate zeckelach. Their yarmulkes are works of art and they will receive sterling Kiddush cups that you will proudly display. And guess what? There’s nothing wrong with any of that.

Perhaps we do it as a sign of our conspicuous consumption. But perhaps we also buy, wear, and display religious finery for our kids because we know deep down that they those objects belong to ages; they endure eternally.

In some mystical way, maybe we should start thinking about ourselves as the tallesim that wrap themselves around eternity. How do we embrace eternity when we dress ourselves down in vintage Pig Pen?

We know what to wear when we embrace a Bloody Mary at a cocktail party. Why should it be any worse when we ready ourselves and Shmerel to embrace the Eternal One?

SUNDAY MORNING IN SOLITUDE WITH MY NY TIMES

My hometown in Greenville, South Carolina, still has a few redeeming qualities. Premier among them is a tiny Jewish-style delicatessen, Greenfield’s. I say “Jewish style,” because it serves outstanding bagels imported from New York, but slices ham on the same slicer as the kosher corned beef.

Yet, I enjoy an occasional lox-and-bagel at Greenfield’s on Sunday morning. My only problem: Half of the Jewish community does precisely the same. Had I been a plumber, this would not pose a problem. But I am, after all, Herr Rabbiner, the know-it-all of everything Jewish.

As I try to spend a moment reading my beloved New York Times, I am relentlessly interrupted by the local Yehudim. Uninvited, they pull up a chair and ask penetrating questions that I would have happily answered them on Shabbos – had they only been in schule:

“Rabbi, I’ve always (this in itself is a sign of danger) wanted to know,” one gushy congregant asks, “whether I should put up a tombstone for my baby . . . Fifi my poodle?”

“I’ve only got a moment, Rabbi, but a gentile friend wants me tell him why Jews don’t believe in Jesus instead of going to hell.”

“Is it true that some people think Jews have horns because some fanatics still wear those little black boxes on their heads?”

“Rabbi, if I wear my toupee to schule, do I still have to wear a yarmulke?”

“If they really cared, why can’t the Rabbis change all of the holidays to weekends?”

Alas, no one has yet to ask me “How many rungs were in Jacob’s ladder?” or “How many commandments are in the Ten Commandments?”

Then one Sunday morning I was approached by a youngish woman who whispered in my ear, “Rabbi, Jack and I are getting divorced.”

“How sad,” I tell her.

“Sad?” she smiles seductively. “Not me. Now I have a chance to have an affair with you!”

Without responding yes or no, I finally closed my New York Times and drove down the street to MacDonald’s to have a biscuit and a Coke . . . ah, a mechayeh, uninterrupted.