It beats the persecution

[avram]

David Bernstein, of the Volokh Conspiracy, quotes from the April 26th issue of People Magazine (which isn’t online):

She’s got the deejay blasting Beyonce and a computerized light show. She has nearly 100 friends crammed into Manhattan’s ritzy Bryant Park Grill. She’s got the gift table groaning with Tiffany bags and guests greeting her dad at the door with “Mazel tov!” Everything is perfectly poised for 13-year-old Kimya to have a world- class bat mitzvah, except for one tiny detail:

Kimya isn’t Jewish.

Welcome to the strange new world of faux mitzvahs, where non-Jewish teens like Kimya Zahedi—whose parents are Iranian-born Muslims—and Taylor Lasley, African-American and Presbyterian, get to party like it’s 5764 (that’s 2004 on the Hebrew calendar). A centuries-old Jewish tradition, bar mitzvahs (for boys) and bat mitzvahs (for girls) mark the passage from childhood to adulthood with rituals like candlelighting and slicing braided bread called challah, as well as with elaborate and often expensive celebrations. Now more and more non-Jewish kids areinsisting on their own bar or bat mitzvah-style parties—without the religious rites and months of studious preparation—when they turn 13. “You see how you can have so much fun with so many people,” says Kimya, who attends one or two bar or bat mitzvahs every weekend in and around her wealthy neighborhood in Alpine, N.J.

Comments

[avram]

Hi, Kimya. You think this is a big deal? It’s just one magazine article, and two or three web discussions. This is nothing.

Anyway, I don’t think anyone thinks your wannabes. I think some Jews are a little upset (not me, I don’t much care; I posted that magazine quote because I thought it was funny) that their traditions are being used as party themes by people who haven’t grown up in those traditions. It makes them feel like something special to them is being used frivolously.