13 and Counting

By general consensus, this whole bar mitzvah thing started to supersize about 25 years ago. Before that, it was possible to celebrate this rite of passage with a modest affair, perhaps a cocktail party followed by dinner. Maybe a band. There were plenty of expensive spectacles, of course, but they were the exception.

Not anymore -- especially in New York, the bar mitzvah capital of the world. Nobody seems to have ever done a study of the economic impact of local bar mitzvahs, but it keeps legions of people employed here -- caterers, event planners, celebrity impersonators, acrobats, videographers, musicians, floral designers, photographers, games people, bus drivers and so on.

This is the height of the fall bar mitzvah season, the months after the Jewish high holidays in September and before schools break for winter vacation. A few weeks ago, David H. Brooks, the CEO of a body-armor maker, reportedly spent millions on his daughter's bat mitzvah, renting out the Rainbow Room, which sits atop Rockefeller Plaza, and flying in the rapper 50 Cent, as well as Aerosmith, Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks. Brooks, by all accounts, set a new standard of excess, but he, as statisticians say, is an outlier. What's every bit as striking around here is the norm.

For 16 years, James has been throwing parties that make Rio's Carnival seem dreary. There are scores of event planners working in New York, many staging the extravaganzas of drama, kiddie games and three-course feasts now in vogue among the Jewish elites of Manhattan and nearby suburbs. James is arguably the most sought-after in the bunch. Hire him and you'll get a noisy, colorful and -- here's the key part -- custom-made affair. In a typical year, New York City kids in the thirteen-ish age range, and their parents, will attend dozens of bar and bat mitzvahs. (Bat mitzvahs are for girls.) It's understood in this rarefied stratum that each event should be not merely lavish but unique. No copying allowed. Nothing generic, either.

"It can get pretty competitive among the parents," says James, who always speaks in the rushed tones of a man late for a meeting. "I've had fathers say, 'I'll hire you, but only if you put on my son's bar mitzvah first' " -- meaning early in the season, ahead of the crowd.

There have been bar mitzvahs at Yankee Stadium and Radio City Music Hall. James has a client who plans to rent out the entire Museum of Natural History on a Saturday night. No matter the venue, James will engineer a gaudy entrance for the 13-year-old guest of honor, one that invariably gets a standing ovation. His go-to move is something called a "fantasy video," which plays on TV screens right before The Moment arrives. Most of them are filmed and edited weeks in advance, by professionals whom James hires.

"We had this one kid who was really into the Yankees and we sent him to Tampa, where the Yankees were in spring training," he says. "And we filmed him in a Yankees uniform, around the park, pretending to play with the team. We even had a couple Yankees say, 'Happy bar mitzvah,' I think. Then you saw him waking up in his bed, realizing it was all a dream. And he looks at his clock and sees that he's late for his bar mitzvah party."

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The origins of the bar mitzvah are something of a mystery. There's nothing about it in the Bible, or the Talmud. It probably first cropped up in 5th century Europe, according to Mark Oppenheimer, author of "Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America." Not until the 15th century, though, does it become a celebration that bears any resemblance to the bacchanalias of today, and even then it was the province of the small fraction of very wealthy Jews.

"It was considered an event worthy of celebration, but that might mean you have your first glass of schnapps," Oppenheimer says.

The grandiose bar mitzvah -- here's a shocker -- seems to be an American invention. It isn't hard to find rabbis who worry about this arms race to ever-flashier fetes, who think parents are driven by the need to publicly demonstrate their affluence, who wonder what poker and popcorn have to do with Judaism.

"I think these events miss the point," says Rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen of Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel in New Haven, Conn. "A bar mitzvah is about connection to community and connection to God, it's about accepting responsibility, it's the moment that parents accept that their children are growing up."