A bittersweat Bat Mitzvah celebration
The young lady, a Jewish day school student, did an excellent job of leining (chanting the reading from the Torah/Bible scroll) and chanting the haftarah/reading from the Prophets. There were plenty of children present. The synagogue was nicely designed but not opulent, and the meal, a cold buffet, was so delightfully unpretentious and reminded me so much of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah meals of my youth that I complimented the parents.
But I couldn't help thinking that if I'd only listened to my husband and moved to North Jersey 26 years ago, our son would have had a neighborhood such as that one, much more Jewishly-involved than ours, in which to grow up. Insisting on staying in New York City was the worse mistake I've ever made, and celebrations such as this one, precisely because they're so delightful, rub salt in that old self-inflicted wound.
But I couldn't help thinking that if I'd only listened to my husband and moved to North Jersey 26 years ago, our son would have had a neighborhood such as that one, much more Jewishly-involved than ours, in which to grow up. Insisting on staying in New York City was the worse mistake I've ever made, and celebrations such as this one, precisely because they're so delightful, rub salt in that old self-inflicted wound.
posted by Shira Salamone at 1:02 AM
4 Comments:
just remember, the past is as good as it's going to get. time to give up your regrets for rosh hashanah.
That's sound advice. Thanks, Eliyahu, and Shanah Tovah (Have a Good Jewish [New] Year).
I don't understand what you mean, Shira. Aren't there lots of Jews in New York? I realize not in all of New York, but still . . .
Katrina, while there are certainly lots of Jews in New York, many of them are only marginally observant, if at all. Serious advice: Never move into a neighborhood without spending at least one Shabbat/Sabbath there. One look at the demographics of our current local synagogue would have made it clear to us that our current neighborhood would not be a good place to raise a kid to become a committed Jew. But since it didn't occur to me at the time to take our local shul for a test drive, so to speak, before moving in, our son ended up being raised in a Little House on the Prairie.
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