The Big Event was my looming Bar Mitzvah, the ritual performance wherein the thirteen-year -old boy is transformed into a man, at least in the eyes of the community, and when the Rabbi each week tells the mother of whichever boy is entering manhood that he, the Rabbi, has never heard a better job done on the ritual chanting, and when the boy’s family hosts a celebration for family and friends while the boy, happily relieved that he has completed his duties collects gifts, usually money, from the guests.
It was and remains, I suppose, common practice for this sum to be put away into a secure bank account and saved for some future need, usually college tuition or perhaps the equipment needed to open a dental practice. It therefore amused me, as it still does as I recall it, when I used that money a decade later to, along with the money from loans and part time jobs, pay the expenses of our first year of marriage during which we were both full time students. Amused because all that money given to me to celebrate and commemorate my entrance into what was considered Jewish manhood was used to make possible my marriage, still intact half a century later, to a shiksa.
Previously appeared in Wordwhipper Press