"For the bar mitzvah of his only grandson, he decided he wanted to go all out, to give him the bar mitzvah he never had”
Although it was more than 30 years ago, the memory remains vivid.
As an eighth-grade rebbe, I was naturally invited to my students’ bar mitzvahs. Most of them were modest affairs in a local shul. The one exception to the group was Moishele (name changed). Moishele’s bar mitzvah was celebrated in a weekend-long affair at a hotel in the Catskills.
There was no gefilte fish with chrein for the appetizer; instead, we received Peking Duck. The chassidish cousin (my wife and I were invariably placed at the token heimishe family table), remarked, “Voz iz mit di katshke? Ich veln mayn gefilte fish!”
The entire Shabbos continued in an opulent, extravagant, and exaggerated fashion, and the feast reached its culinary culmination on Motzaei Shabbos, with ten food stations with themed food from all over the world.
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