My Big Day
I remember my Barmitzvah as clearly as if it was seventy years ago. Actually, it was a bit more, but who’s counting? The date, Saturday 28th November, 1953, is indelibly imprinted in my brain. I woke early that morning. The sun was rising, heralding a crisp, clear Johannesburg summer’s day. The birds were twittering “Mazeltov” to me, for on that day I would become a man, or, in the words of the apocryphal Barmitzvah boy’s speech, “Today, I am a fountain pen”.
For at least a year I had been diligently rehearsing for the grand event. I knew that my parents’ standing in the community depended on my performance, and this awareness added an extra frisson of anxiety to my already entrenched stage fright. I was particularly careful to observe every jot and tittle of the Hebrew text which constituted my ‘portion’ of the Torah, and as pundits will know, there are plenty of jots and tittles littering the path of Biblical Hebrew, not to mention squiggles and dashes to ensure that the right notes are sung in harmony with the right syllables. Fortunately, I had been coached by Mr Himmelstein, a grandmaster in the art of coaching. I had even learnt how to lay tefillin and I could sing all the relevant blessings without so much as a glance at the text.
Time has erased most of the details of my operatic debut. However, I recall a lyric about Joseph, his imprisonment on a false charge of sexual impropriety and his uncanny ability to interpret the dreams of two of his fellow prisoners, one of whom, gratified when Joseph correctly predicted that he would be found innocent, promised to put in a good word for him with Pharaoh but forgot all about him and left him to rot in jail. The other, sad to relate, had by then left the stage in a box.
I sang my portion with much verve, though tremulously and slightly off key. After singing the last attenuated syllable, I was greeted with what sounded like a collective sneeze from the congregation, which I afterwards learnt was the traditional way of signalling approval and relief. Finally, I had become a man.
From then on, it was simply a case of freewheeling through Part Two, known as ‘The Reception’, including ‘The Speech’, in which the Barmitzvah boy thanks everyone for their presents – sorry, ‘presence’. The speech, by the way, had been carefully crafted in advance and censored by my parents, so I was able to rattle through it quite smoothly, in a high-pitched monotone, making only a couple of gaffes. In a minor slip of the tongue, I thanked Rabbi Kuperman for everything that he had done to me over the past year, and I then went on to express regret that my late parents, (who at that stage were not yet late), could not be present (they were) on this special day. Astute observes would have realised that I had meant to refer to my late grandparents, Z”L.
As the reception drew to a close, I had no other task than to submit to the busty embraces and lipsticky kisses of the ladies in the congregation and the sweaty hugs of the gentlemen, most of whom I had never before met in my life. Many of the guests were eager to foist envelopes containing cheques on me, and I regret to say that some farribels were triggered in the ensuing weeks, after I had managed to lose a few envelopes on the way home. It might also be worth noting that in those days, many Barmitzvah gifts came in the form of books. In this way I acquired several identical treatises on Jewish history, which today, seven decades later, I am still in the process of reading.
It will be seen from this meandering reminiscence that my Barmitzvah was a landmark occasion in my personal development. Whatever the future would bring, it was an initiation into my Jewish identity and despite many diversions along the way, the memory of my Big Day has obstinately refused to leave me.