A Sign of the Coming Apocalypse
Recognize anyone? The woman on the left is Ashanti. The man is Ja Rule. The girl in the middle is Amber Ridinger. This is a photo from...wait for it....her bat mitzvah reception. To quote from an MTV news story here:
"On Saturday, Amber, a Miami Country Day School eighth-grader and aspiring fashion designer, became an adult — and it only cost her parents $500,000. Ridinger's bat mitzvah ceremony was followed by a chichi party that doubled as an out-of-this-world 13th-birthday celebration. It unfolded inside Miami Beach club the Forge, and the party's guests arrived in limos to a pink carpet cluttered with television cameras and local news crews."
There are so many things wrong with this story that I don't know where to begin. Is there a rabbi in the house that can comment on this (wink wink, nudge nudge)?
Perhaps I am merely bitter because all my parents could do for me was have Tiny Tim play at my bris. And Amber's dress cost more than my wedding.
As they say in Miami, Oy Gevalt!
4 comments:
My attempt at humor. Sorry.
Oy! And I thought it was bad on the NYC upper east side Bat/bar mitzvah circuit cum 1983. Oh and like I said there have only been 1 food fight and one knocked down candy/pastry cart at bar/bat mitzvah's in my family (different occassions. OY! What will Jolee and Shayna ask for. They better be happy with a mix tape of Trapped in a Closet.
Ditto Bill, what would a rabbi have to say about all of this???
Hey- I guess I have a couple things to say about this:
1) The fact that it is in the news measn that it is relatively anamolous. It wouldn't be in the news if it were the norm, right?
2) Back during the time of the Mishnah, Rabban Gamliel saw that people were burying their dead under the cover of night. Why? Because they were embarrassed by the fact that they could not give their loved ones a send-off comparable to that of their wealthy neighbors. Rabban Gamliel, who was very wealthy himself, made a proclamation that everyone from then on had to be buried in simplicity. Something akin to this has happened in religious communities with weddings. There are rabbis who put a maximum limit of the people who are allowed to be invited so that it does not break the finances of the marrying couple (or their parents). Perhaps there should be something like this for Bar Mitzvahs. In most communities, people don't listen to their rabbi, so I am not sure that this would work. So maybe the answer should be what a friend of mine suggested (with toungue in cheek):
3) The rabbi's fee should be a percentage of the cost of the party.
One final question about this: How much of the service did the girl do herself? Did she have a community service project?
This story appeared on the front cover of The New York Times Sunday Styles section this past week. You can read the article, copied in my back-up blog, BillyBlog2 at
http://oxypoet2.blogspot.com/2005/11/amber-redux.html
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