The tables were set with gold plastic plates and a three-piece band and singer were warming up in a corner. Pitchers of ice water lined one table and there were bottles of soda pop dotting the other tables at regular intervals. I sat back to watch the show.
They were boys and boys are always hungry, so the food came first. Bowls piled high with Middle Eastern Shwarma and beef goulash were brought out and duly decimated. After the boys had eaten enough for the clamor of their hunger to die down, rabbis told stories illustrating the humility and devotion of Reb Zusha of Hanipoli, the bar mitzvah boy’s apparent namesake, and hoped the modern-day Zusha would emulate this righteous figure. There was a brief speech by the bar mitzvah boy himself, interrupted by loud song, as is the custom. The last thing anyone wants is for the bar mitzvah boy to develop a swelled head!
Grace after Meals was said and then things began to HOP. The band struck up a song and what do you know? They were good! The counselors started to dance and the campers followed their lead..
This was all fine and good. It was no more than what anyone expected at a bar mitzvah. But how to describe the electric energy here that was something I had never witnessed at any other bar mitzvah party? I couldn’t help it. I had to tap my foot and I smiled until my cheeks ached from holding the position so long.
It was more like a wedding than a bar mitzvah in its intensity and joy. Here was a juggler. There was a boy on a unicycle wearing a funny wide tie, weaving in and out of the dance circle. Zusha was carried aloft on a chair and then thrown into the air countless times. Perhaps thirteen times in all, one for each year of his life.
The campers did their best to add something to the goings on by taking turns break-dancing at the center of the circle and so it went, on and on, for over an hour.
Every so often, one of the rabbis would glance over at me with a smile. “See?” their smiles seemed to say. “This is how we do it. This is how we make a bar mitzvah at TheZone. This is how we make a bar mitzvah a boy will never forget.”
And I nodded. I got it. Zusha Steinherz, a young boy from Staten Island, was never going to forget this evening, the love shown not so much for him, but for the mitzvot, the commandments. He would always understand that there is nothing so joyful as fulfilling man’s purpose as a Jew and as a human being. Zusha Steinherz would always know that there is something more important than a lavish buffet and a creative invitation. He would always know how very lucky he was to be one of the Chosen People, chosen to receive God’s law.
And just when I thought the celebration had sufficed to drive this singular point home, the boys showed me I was wrong. They lifted Zusha Steinherz, the boy from Staten Island, onto the chair once more, and carried him out of the dining room, and through all the corridors of the camp, singing songs of joy all the while, until I could no longer keep up with them. I watched the trail of boys go off singing and dancing into the Catskills night. And I knew that my future lay with these boys who would become men, while never forgetting the true meaning of a bar mitzvah, the joy of the commandments, the joy of assuming the mantle of the past to forge a bond with the future.
Now this. THIS. Was a bar mitzvah. A bar mitzvah that rocked the night like it had never been rocked before.