Faux Mitzvahs
From People Magazine:
Blatantly stoles from here.
What is wrong with this country? Gentiles feel left out because they can't have Bar Mitzvahs, so they gut all the religious and cultural implications and have the party anyway?
Quote:
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.
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.
Blatantly stoles from here.
What is wrong with this country? Gentiles feel left out because they can't have Bar Mitzvahs, so they gut all the religious and cultural implications and have the party anyway?
Comments
Originally posted by HOM
From People Magazine:
Blatantly stoles from here.
What is wrong with this country? Gentiles feel left out because they can't have Bar Mitzvahs, so they gut all the religious and cultural implications and have the party anyway?
As opposed to? There are no other religious and cultural traditions have been commercialized and stripped of nearly all of their original spiritual/religious/cultural significance?
Easter? Bunnies, chocolate eggs, colored eggs.
Halloween/All Hallows Eve? Costume parties, candy, drinking heavily *
Thanksgiving? Gorging, Super Bowl, arguing
St. Patrick's Day? Excessive drunkenness and lewdness and puking *
Christmas? Buying frenzies, greed, materialism
Many other examples.
All I can say, is welcome to America. (And if you can't come to us, we deliver).
What else can you expect when Christianity is depicted by pop culture as being the religion of simpletons and racists, while all other cultures are praised to the hilt.
This is a product of tolerance (a good thing) without also having courage to retain one's own original cultural traditions amidst the sea of competing cultures. (A bad thing. The "not retaining" part, that is.).
We are seeing entire heritages (of all kinds) completely ignored and abandoned in a single generation, as opposed to a more gradual process over centuries.
Pride was not always a negative buzzword as it is today. Simple pride in one's heritage is now equivalent to racism, particularly if done by whites/Gentiles/Anglos... Kids of any type are no longer comfortable being themselves.
Korean hip hop, African American computer nerds, Gentiles having bat mitzvahs and bar mitzvahs.
Just be glad they are all getting along happily.
---
* Okay, some of these just might actually go all the way back hundreds and thousands of years
Originally posted by mattjohndrow
that sucks, poor gentiles, not!
Is that referring to what I wrote?
I was talking about all cultures each losing their respective cultural heritages as each gets assimilated into the great world culture.
I only hilighted whites/Gentiles because they are the ones doing the copying in that particular story. Plus American culture is pretty dominant and aggressive externally, worldwide, yet internal to America, white/Christian culture is having steady pressure to break up and "assimilate" (said ironically because it is rare that a majority has to assimilate within its own borders).
Whites/Gentiles retaining their heritage is but an iota of the points I was making.
So we have seemingly odd instances of, say, white Americans becoming Buddhists (my ex-roommate) and people in Thailand becoming Christian overnight because of Mel's The Passion. (As in my future sister-in-law's case, I'm tempted to say "sadly").
Don't get me wrong, I like mixing things up. But I also love people retaining their cultures as well. Allston where I live is like a Noah's Ark of human cultures. But if we are going to integrate, we are going to have instances such as gentiles adopting Jewish customs and other seemingly bizarre combinations.
But I submit that any perceived "bizarreness" is more telling about what one's expectations and limits to tolerance are.
Better bar mitzvahs than suicide vests.
Originally posted by mattjohndrow
it was about the topic, sorry, not specifically to what you wrote
No problem, and my post stands by itself anyway I hope
I don't see why these kids can't just have a thirteenth birthday party. Then again, I can't understand why preteen/teen girls do virtually anything, so...
Originally posted by HOM
What is wrong with this country? Gentiles feel left out because they can't have Bar Mitzvahs, so they gut all the religious and cultural implications and have the party anyway?
I don't know if anyone here has been to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah lately, but for the most part they have become celebrations of conspicuous consumption more than anything else. That non-Jewish 13 year olds with wealthy parents want in on the gift and party action doesn't surprise me at all. Bear in mind also that the concept of a Bat Mitzvah is a 20th Century American innovation.
Originally posted by johnq
What else can you expect when Christianity is depicted by pop culture as being the religion of simpletons and racists, while all other cultures are praised to the hilt.
This is a product of tolerance (a good thing) without also having courage to retain one's own original cultural traditions amidst the sea of competing cultures. (A bad thing. The "not retaining" part, that is.).
I agree with *almost* everything you say, however I'm skeptical that the root cause is the 'oppression' of Christians in modern America. I'm glad you gave the pagans a shout out too, cos if there is anyone who knows about hijacking festivals for their own purposes then it's the Christians.