Hi! My name is Danny and I'm 13. I live in Ohio with my mom and dad and my little sister Ashley, who is 10. On Saturday, May 15, 1999 I became a bar mitzvah at our synagogue. I worked on it for a WHOLE YEAR, every Tuesday with the cantor, on top of Hebrew school. So I figured it should get its own web page.

Derek and Raymond from school came, and they asked me about a million questions at the party, so this page is partly for them, and for anybody else who isn't Jewish and wants to know what the big deal is.

WHAT IS A BAR MITZVAH?

"Bar mitzvah" means "son of the commandment." When a Jewish boy turns 13, he becomes responsible for keeping the commandments himself. Before that, it's kind of on your parents. Now it's on me. (A girl becomes a bat mitzvah, at 12 or 13.)

You don't actually need a ceremony for it to happen. It happens on your birthday no matter what. But the tradition is that you get called up in front of the whole congregation for the first time to read from the Torah, which is the scroll with the five books of Moses on it, handwritten in Hebrew with no vowels. That part is HARD.

It also means I can be counted in a minyan, which is the ten adults you need for certain prayers. So I count now. Literally. (Remember that, it's going to be important.)

My mom made me put this part in: it does NOT mean I'm a grown-up. I still have a bedtime. Thanks, Mom.

MY TORAH PORTION: BAMIDBAR

The Torah is read in order, a section every week, all year long, so your portion depends on the week you were born. Mine is Bamidbar, which is the beginning of the book of Numbers. "Bamidbar" means "in the wilderness."

Here's what happens in it. The Israelites are camped in the wilderness of Sinai, and God tells Moses to count everybody, tribe by tribe, all the men twenty years old and up. It comes to 603,550. (The book is called Numbers for a reason!) Then it tells exactly where every tribe camps, three tribes on each side of the Tabernacle, each one with its own flag. The Levites, who take care of the Tabernacle, get counted separately.

When I first read it I thought, great, I got the part that's a LIST. But the cantor said to look closer. God doesn't just say "about six hundred thousand." Every single person gets counted, by name and by family. Nobody is just a number. That became my speech.

MY HAFTARAH

After the Torah you chant a haftarah, which is a reading from one of the books of the prophets. Usually it goes with the Torah portion. The regular haftarah for Bamidbar is from the prophet Hosea, and it says the people of Israel will be as many as the sand of the sea, which can't be counted. Counting again!

BUT. My bar mitzvah was on the day before the new Hebrew month of Sivan started. (A new month is called Rosh Chodesh.) When that happens on a Shabbat, you read a special haftarah instead, from the First Book of Samuel, chapter 20. It's called Machar Chodesh, from two words right at the start that mean "tomorrow is the new month." The cantor taught me both of them, so now I know two. Show-off.

Here's the story, and it's a good one. David and Jonathan are best friends. Jonathan's father is King Saul, and Saul wants to kill David. There's going to be a big feast for the new month, and Jonathan tells David that if he doesn't come, his empty seat will be noticed. They make a secret signal: Jonathan will shoot three arrows and send a boy to get them, and what he yells to the boy will tell David if it's safe to come back or if he has to run away. It isn't safe. They say goodbye, and they both cry.

See what happened? His seat was empty and everybody noticed. Because David counted. It fit my speech perfectly. The cantor says that kind of thing happens a lot more than you'd think.

One more counting thing: Passover to Shavuot is 49 days, and you count every one of them out loud. It's called counting the Omer. My bar mitzvah was day 44. Shavuot was six days later. I'm telling you, this whole thing was about counting.

MY SPEECH (THE SHORT VERSION)

(The real one was four minutes long and had a joke about my sister in it. She laughed. Mom didn't.)

THE DAY

6:10 AM   Woke up. Could not go back to sleep. Practiced my haftarah in my head about five times.
7:30   Could not eat breakfast. Mom made me eat half a bagel.
8:15   Dad tied my tie because my hands were shaking too much.
9:30   Services started. I sat up front with my family. My tallit is from Grandma and Grandpa, white with blue stripes.
10:20   My first aliyah, which is when you're called up to the Torah. The rabbi called my Hebrew name and my legs walked up there by themselves.
10:25   Chanting the Torah. I used the yad, which is a silver pointer shaped like a little hand, because you're not supposed to touch the letters. I didn't mess up. OK, I messed up once. The cantor fixed it so quietly nobody noticed.
10:50   Haftarah. This was the part I was most scared of and it went the BEST.
11:05   The second I finished, everybody threw soft candy at me! That's a tradition, to wish you a sweet life. Little kids run up and grab it. My sister threw hers SO HARD it hit me right in the ear. She says it was an accident. It wasn't.
11:15   My speech.
12:15   Kiddush and lunch. Every grown-up I've ever met pinched my cheek.

PICTURES FROM THE SYNAGOGUE

You don't take pictures in the synagogue on Shabbat, so these were taken on Thursday, May 13, at my last rehearsal. Uncle Brian took ALL the pictures on this page with his camera. Thanks, Uncle Brian!

Me at the Torah with the yad. You can't read it from there, and honestly it's hard to read from up close too.


Passing down the Torah. Grandpa hands the Torah to my mom and dad, and on Saturday they handed it to me. It means it gets passed from one generation to the next. Grandma cried. Grandpa said he didn't, but he did.

MY MITZVAH PROJECT: 412 BOOKS

A lot of kids do a mitzvah project, which is a project to help people. I collected books for the children's hospital. I put boxes out in January and I counted them every week (of course).

We took them to the hospital in Dad's van on the Sunday after, in fourteen boxes. The lady there said the most wanted kind is chapter books for kids about 8 to 12, because those get read to pieces. So if you have any of those, there's still a box at Hebrew school!

THE PARTY!!!

The party was Saturday night in a hall we rented, with a DJ. Everybody danced, even Grandpa.

The hora is a circle dance where everybody holds hands and goes around and around, faster and faster. Then they put you in a chair and LIFT YOU UP in the air and dance you around. Dad, Uncle Henry and Uncle Oscar lifted me. Uncle Oscar is the big one and Uncle Henry is the skinny one, and the chair kept tipping toward Uncle Henry's side. They ALMOST dropped me. Twice. My tie was flying everywhere. It was the scariest and best part of the whole night.

UP IN THE CHAIR!!! That's Dad on the left, Uncle Oscar in the middle and Uncle Henry on the right. Look at my tie. Look at Uncle Henry's face. That's the face of a man who is about to drop somebody.

Then there's the candle-lighting. There are thirteen candles on the cake, one for every year, plus one for good luck. For each one the DJ calls up somebody important to you to light it. I wrote a little rhyme for every one. Ashley and I lit the last one together, the good-luck one.

Ashley and me lighting the good-luck candle. She had to stand on a chair to reach. The cake was white with blue roses and chocolate inside.

TOP 10 BEST PARTS OF MY PARTY

1. Getting lifted in the chair. Even though I thought I was going to die.
2. Derek and Raymond doing the hora. They had no idea what they were doing. They were great.
3. The Electric Slide. Grandma knew every step. Nobody knew Grandma knew every step.
4. Grandpa dancing with Grandma, slow, in the middle of the floor, while everybody watched.
5. The candle-lighting. My rhyme for Uncle Brian was the funniest. Everybody said so.
6. The sundae bar. Three scoops, hot fudge, no adults looking.
7. Limbo contest. My cousin won. I came in third.
8. The kids' table where we built a tower out of the little candy boxes.
9. My friends from Hebrew school and my friends from regular school finally meeting each other.
10. When it was over and I took off my tie.

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you to the cantor for a whole year of Tuesdays, to the rabbi, to my mom and dad for everything, to Grandma and Grandpa for my tallit, to Uncle Brian for the pictures, to Uncle Henry and Uncle Oscar for not dropping me (almost), to everybody who gave books, and to Ashley, even for the candy. And thank you for all the presents. I am writing my thank-you notes. Mom, I am. I'm on number 31.