On The Anniversary Of My Bar Mitzva

This is my official Bar Mitzva photo. It was shot in a studio on West Farms Square in the Bronx.  Somewhere packed away now, there is also a large, framed print that was hand colored.  It was on a sort of permenant dispalay in my parent's livingroom. The photo is also the first page of my Bar Mitzva album. In the years that followed, my parents delighted in embarrassing me by pulling that album out to show to anybody they could pin down on our couch. In many ways, this photo is the product a decade of frantic activity on their part. Actually, I think they started planning my Bar Mitzva right after their wedding. Never mind that I wasn't born until a few years later, they were determined to nail this.

My memory of that day itself isn't all that much. What I do remember is the preparation I had to go through: endless hours spent learning to chant some dogrel in a language that I would never understand and certainly never need to repeat again. Mine was to be a one shot performance. I knew it. They knew it. I hated it.

Early on my folks realized this deal was going to be problematical. See,it wasn't enough that I had to learn the chanting bit. I also had to get the rest of the religious bit. I was not having any of it. In desperation, they sent me to series of local teachers, 'm'lamads' they were called, self taught and self styled. My memory of them is that they were all old, gray bearded, spoke with funny accents and smelled bad.

My least favorite was a guy who ran a basement storefront 'school' in my Grandmother's apartment building on Mohegan Avenue, off 180^th Street. He taught us in groups of half a dozen after our regular public school classes. This was the last place any 11 year old boy wanted to be after school. I hated it. We all hated him. The feeling was mutual. About the only thing memorable about those endless afternoons is that he used to disappear through a door at the back several times during each class, to return a few minutes later redolent with the aroma of Manachevitz on his breath – along with the other miasma that surrounded him – and push on for another half hour.  In retrospect, I suppose I sympathize a bit with the old boy.

As The Day got closer, my parents got more frantic. Among other things, they spent the better part of 2 years sitting around the kitchen table planning the seating arrangements for the reception. There were these transgenerational feuds that had to be honored.

 “You can't put Cousin Gussy with Irving and Sylvia......... remember?”

 “What about we stick her at Table 12?”

  “With Krutzman's? Maybe, but remember the time.........."  And so it went.

In the end, my parents probably spent much more on the party that evening then they could have afforded. I think they had a great time. At least I'd like to believe that they did. I remember that there was food I didn't like and a bunch of old people I'd never seen before who handed me envelopes, pinched my cheek and mumbled. 

Later that year, I got to spend some of my new found loot on a good camera. Then I learned that as school photographer for my Junior Highschool newspaper, I could get out of classes. And occasionally I could get into places I didn't belong; these were skills that would serve me well in the years to come. And before the year was out, I had photographed the Mayor of our City and a famous - and disturbingly gorgeous – actress. What's more, I had actually sold my first photo to a local newspaper. 

 The rest is history.