My Friend Steve’s Second Bar Mitzvah at Age 83: Today You Get a Fountain Pen!

On a recent Saturday night, we celebrated a bar mitzvah in my living room.  There were only six of us, all long-time, very good friends.

The Wednesday before, I received a text from a dear friend’s daughter, who lives with her family in Atlanta. It said, “It’s Dad’s birthday. Don’t tell the Rabbi but could you guys please do a little something? He told me he doesn’t want to celebrate.”

The back story is that our dear friend Steve has turned 83 and that’s a momentous birthday for us Jews. As Psalm 90:10 says, “The span of our life is 70 years or, given the strength, 80 years.” But an additional thirteen years! That’s a blessing.

At age 13, a Jewish boy becomes a bar mitzvah and enters the holy covenant of Jews as a man– one who can be counted for a minyan – the 10-men congregational quorum needed to recite certain prayers. Because Steve has turned 70 plus 13 –83– he is granted the right to have another bar mitzvah.

But if he did, he would have to go up to the bima (the raised platform in the synagogue where the ark is located), recite his haftarah (the selection from the Book of Prophets that he recited at his first bar mitzvah)—meaning he’d have to still be able to read Hebrew fairly well. Steve is out of practice and has never liked being the center of focus in a room.

Our little Friday Shabbat dinner group came up with a plan to mark the occasion. First, we had to decide what kind of meal we should have. Chinese? Mexican? Where would we have the dinner? My house? A restaurant? I didn’t want to cook.

Then my son, Jason, started thinking—which is always interesting. It’s a bar mitzvah. Steve can use my tallit (prayer shawl) and we have kippot (skull caps). Let’s find his haftarah portion. Jason was thinking “party.” That part was my job.

I called the local synagogue and asked that Steve’s bar mitzvah haftarah be faxed over to me in English and in Hebrew. Next, I went to Party City to buy candles and balloons, followed by a stop at Costco for a cake. We decided we would order Chinese food.

We didn’t tell Steve about the party because his daughter had said that he didn’t want to celebrate. So, I just called him up and asked if he was busy Saturday night. I knew the answer would be no. I invited him over for dinner, which was not that unusual, so his antennae didn’t pick up any suspicious vibes. I asked him to bring vanilla ice cream because he likes it and because, otherwise, he typically brings something inedible.

Picture the unfolding of the evening’s event:

My living room is set up with ballons, tied to my music stand, which has been placed in front of the fireplace so Steve, when we called him to the “podium,” could look out at all of us. We had placed the pages of his haftarah reading on the music stand and, beneath it, a gift certificate for a free hour of computer help anytime he needs it. That’s my friend Jay’s line of business –fixing and maintaining computers.

After we have appetizers and cocktails, I wrap the tallit around Steve and Jason hands him a kippah. We tell our birthday boy to go to the makeshift podium and read his haftorah. He reads it as if it were a poem. We are an encouraging and supportive audience. We are all moved. Laughter. Applause. We heartily sing, “Siman tov and Mazel tov,” congratulating him on his birthday and his bar mitzvah.

Photo courtesy of the author.

We ascend the stairs to eat our takeout Chinese food in the dining room, which is all set up in traditional Jewish colors of blues, silver and white. We remind Steve that in our era many of the non-cash presents were exquisite fountain pens. Yes! We are that old. Non-cartridge fountain pens, often a Mont Blanc set comprised of pen, lead pencil and some other piece that escapes me, all presented in a lovely case.

We ask Steve what he wanted to be when he grew older and what he would do with all his imaginary bar mitzvah loot. We congratulate him on becoming a bar mitzvah–again.

We eat, talk, blow out the candles on the birthday cake and talk some more, until it is time to call it a night.

Mazel Tov, Steve, and don’t tell the Rabbi, but you’re a bar mitzvah all over again anyway!

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