The Bar Mitzvah Boy

15th January 2023

15th January 1983. 40 years ago today.

Phil Collins topped the charts. It was a day of peak Thatcher and ZX Spectrum.

It was also the day of my bar mitzvah.

I’m not sure how much of my recollection comes from memory, and how much comes from the shaky video my parents commissioned, and which I haven’t watched since Betamax died (yes folks, we were that format-impaired family). But I remember so clearly being a shy prepubescent kid, waiting with a mixture of excitement and terror for it all to happen.

That’s the thing - there were two kinds of bar mitzvah boys. Some were already stretched by growth spurts, zit spurts and broken voices, trapped in their ill-fitting adolescent body suits.

I was the other type. Shiny. High pitched. Small. I’d love to grab that scared kid and give him a pep talk.

For a year in the lead up to B Day, I paid a weekly trip to my bar mitzvah teacher, Rev Avrom Gamzu, known to all as Gammy. Gammy was a beloved stalwart of the Glasgow Jewish community. He had circumcised me 13 years previously, and now he had an opportunity to shape me further, albeit more figuratively. Once a week I got the bus from school to his home, where he patiently taught me my portions of maftir and haftorah, and an extra piece of sedra which I took on for showboating purposes. We worked through the material in his study every Thursday - he didn’t exactly sing each line, more croaked it out, and I repeated. And repeated. And slowly, we got there.

A few months before the big day, we took a family trip to London, to visit relatives, to see the Queen, and most importantly to buy our simcha outfits. We went on pilgrimage to the iconic Please Mum in Golders Green to get fitted out. My parents bought me a new suit for shul, and an evening jacket which was dark and velvety, shoes which were Italian and even more velvety, and a most fetching bow tie. We drove back to Glasgow with a bootful of gear, togged up and ready to horah.

All our family functions revolved around Giffnock Synagogue, a few minutes walk from our home in the southside. Mum and dad hosted a lunch there for my brother Tim when it was his turn two years later. And a few years on from that, my sister Olga celebrated her bat mitzvah at Giffnock shul – they processed the girls in large batches back then, the bat mitzvah equivalent of a Moonie wedding, followed by a tea back at ours. The secondary status of bat mitzvahs was very harsh for the girls. Sorry Olga, just the patriarchy doing its thing.

Me, I was first born son, so my parents hosted a weekend extravaganza to celebrate their precious boy’s coming of age… a Friday night dinner for the out of towners; a lunch after synagogue for close friends and family; and the main gig, a dinner dance to be held in the Giffnock Synagogue banqueting suite. This series of events was more than ample milestone celebration, you might think. But there was one more piece up for discussion. The bar mitzvah disco.

I’d reluctantly attended a few of these. A hall full of kids. Headbands and ra ra skirts. Cowboy boots. Come on Eileen. Confident youths trying to get snogging and shy ones like me hiding in the corner, not sure what to do with myself. The very idea of organising such a thing and placing me at the centre of it filled me with horror.

I talked it through with my parents. We would only be inviting a few friends to the main dinner dance, this being a time before everything became all about the youngsters. All the same, my folks encouraged me to host something for a wider group of my peers. They suggested that I invite them to come later on the Saturday night. A dinnerless dance, if you like (though my mother is keen to stress that sandwiches were provided). I was conflicted – on the one hand, inviting a load of kids generated all kinds of extra social anxiety. But on the other hand… there was a cute girl.  Who I liked. I’d liked her for ages, for as long as I’d known her. I’d kept my feelings entirely to myself. Obviously. But I’d nurtured this quiet crush all the same. I could invite her along with everyone else, and she would be there. At my bar mitzvah! So I said yes.

Meanwhile, the presents rolled in. These days, the BM gift system has been heavily systematised. Most guests pay their dues in hard cash, and there’s an unspoken rate card. How close are we to them? How grand is the event? And crucially - how much did they give our Johnny? That much? Shit!

But the swag in 1983 were a less regulated affair, a veritable Generation Game conveyor belt of random goods. I received two disc cameras, ensuring that family photos for the next few years were grainy and blurred. I was given multiple electric shavers - I eagerly tried one out on my smooth, stubble-free skin, gave myself a nasty rash and put it back in the cupboard for a decade. I received a disappointingly large number of books. My dad antagonised me each time another one arrived by assuring me I’d value them the most in the years to come. The biggest prize came from my Grandpa Harold, who bought me my first computer, a Vic 20. I pitched it to my parents as the route to my learning programming and the brightest of futures in computing. I may even have believed my own words. Instead, I devoted the next few years to playing video games in my bedroom, flunking a good few exams along the way, before thinking again and getting rid of the evil time-sucker. Avi, my boy, I’m watching you…

The big weekend arrived. Friends and family converged from Manchester, London and Israel. On the Saturday morning I sat nervously in synagogue with my dad and my brother, as my mum and sister looked down from the women’s gallery. I remember little of singing my portions (this part being hallachically excluded from the video) but I know I got through it without any disasters, and all the grown ups told me what a clever young chap I was. Shekoach.

After that it was straight back for an all afternoon lunch at our home, a quick shower and change, and back across the road for a photo session, then an hour of standing awkwardly at the banqueting suite door with my parents to formally greet every guest as they arrived.

The dinner was catered by Henry Wuga, who I identified entirely with the exceptionally vertical chef’s hat which he wore at all functions. I’ve since learned that he had his own amazing stories to tell. I’m told his food was delicious, but I did not eat it. I had butterflies in my stomach right through dinner, because straight after was time for my second performance of the day – the bar mitzvah boy speech. To this day, I practice my speeches until I know every word inside out, my dad moulded me that way. Nigel loves a big simcha set piece, and he wasn’t going to let me damage the family reputation by delivering something sub-standard. So he wrote every word of a clever speech that was far beyond my years and vocabulary, coached me to within an inch of my life and preached “practice, dear boy” until he was ready to unleash his performing monkey. And I did alright. In fact I rather enjoyed it.

It's a funny thing – thirteen years old, I embraced the opportunity to deliver a speech to a hall full of tipsy grown ups. But put me in a room full of teenagers with attitude and I lost the ability to form a coherent sentence. So when they all arrived, I kept to the outside of their circle, observing as they solicited booze from the bar (I drank my first snowball that night) and nicked Mr Wuga’s menthol cigarettes, smoking them rebelliously in the car park. Cute girl was there. She greeted me and asked me if I was having a nice time. I imagined asking her to dance. Willed myself to do it. Then ran back to my family.

Instead, as the band got going, I danced with my mum. I danced with my little sister. I danced with my grandma. There was no raucous Israeli dancing – no moshiach, no salaam.  Just a quick hava nagila, then the band moved onto a selection of hits of the period – Zoom by Fat Larry’s Band and Hold on Tight by ELO were particular highlights. Soon enough, the night was done, and I was the bar mitzvah boy no more.

It was the day that I became a man in the eyes of God, so they told me. I’m not big on the whole God thing, but I am confident that an omnipotent entity would conclude that I remained a child for quite some time after my bar mitzvah. I suspect I’m still a work in progress on that front. But it was a milestone period all the same. All that time in Gammy’s study practising my piece, all the hours with my dad learning the speech. It’s a rite of passage which shapes every BM girl and boy.

And what pep talk would I give that scared kid, waiting for it to happen? I’d tell him it was all going to be alright – on the day, and after. I’d tell him to bloody stick with the computer programming. And I’d tell him to be a bit bolder, and to ask her for a dance.

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