One Year Difference

I started reading a book review on religion when I noticed the reviewer's info:

Mark Oppenheimer edits The New Haven Review and is the author of “Thirteen and a Day: The Bar and Bat Mitzvah Across America.”

Bar Mitzva is at age thirteen.

Bat Mitzva, though, is at age twelve.

What A New Jewess (or her Parents) Wouldn't Do

Have an "American Idol" reject Entertain at 12-year-old Rachel Lader's black-tie, 300-guest bat mitzvah at Oheka Castle in Huntington

The girl planned to donate her bat mitzvah gifts to charities including Best Buddies, Willie Randolph Foundation, Realizing The Dream and DeWayne Murcer Memorial Foundation.

From the story:-

"No, I've never done a bat mitzvah before," said a smiling Malakar, who planned to serenade the Woodbury girl with "Isn't She Lovely" during her first dance with daddy. Afterward, it would be "You Really Got Me," which he sang twice on "Idol," once with Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.

Malakar, who relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles with sister Shyamali and a cousin to work on music, says life after "Idol" is "a whirlwind. While you're on it, it moves so fast. But afterwards, you can kind of sit back and see what happens."

He did sit back as his famous hair was handled by at least three stylists including Jamie Mazzei, who trimmed 2 1/2 inches and worked with a razor to "accentuate the natural curl."...

Malakar isn't the only big name on the guest list. Rachel, whose theme was "Rachel's Red Carpet," planned to make her entrance flanked by Giants Super Bowl champs Brandon Jacobs and Osi Umenyiora, and song duo Ashford and Simpson were slated to appear as well. Her dad, Spencer Lader, who until recently ran a sports memorabilia company, said nobody was being paid to appear. "I have a lot of connections," said Lader. "And Rachel's going to be giving all of her gifts to charity. We do want this to be a very special day, but it also allows us to learn a lesson about those who have less and those who need."

Another Jewish Feminist Angle

Jewish Bnot Mitzva of Chinese origin:-

Of the 613 laws in the Torah, the one that appears most often is the directive to welcome strangers. The girl once known as Fu Qian has been thinking about that a lot lately.

Three weeks ago, she stood at the altar of her synagogue on the Upper West Side and gave a speech about it.

Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children — most of them girls — taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah.

There are plenty of American Jews, of course, who do not “look Jewish.” [see my joke at the end] ...But seldom is the juxtaposition of homeland and new home, of faith and background, so stark. And nothing brings out the contrasts like a bat mitzvah, as formal a declaration of identity as any 13-year-old can be called upon to make. The contradictions show up in ways both playful — yin-and-yang yarmulkes, kiddush cups disguised as papier-mâché dragons, kosher lo mein and veal ribs at the buffet — and profound.

...While no statistics are kept on the number of Chinese children adopted by Jewish families, over all, there were about 1,300 Chinese children adopted into American families from 1991 to 1994, another 17,000 in the second half of the ’90s, and 44,000 since then, according to the State Department.

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“This long journey to becoming a bat mitzvah today has provided me with so many ways of learning,” she said. “The part that will always stay closest to me is the importance of caring for strangers. Just like Jews were once strangers in the land of Egypt, we have all been, or will be strangers at some point in our lives.”

Cece finished, touched the fringe of her shawl to the Torah and kissed it. She returned to her throne and sat down, cheeks red, looking exhausted and relieved.

That night — the eve of the Chinese year of the pig, as fate would have it — Cece and her guests reconvened at the Faculty House at Columbia University. The outer room was set up like a casino, with Cece-backed playing cards and Cece-faced play money. Inside, the music throbbed, the D.J. yelled, the fog machine billowed. Cece and her friends traded their shoes for white socks and pogoed across the floor.

After dinner — kosher Chinese for the kids, steak for the adults — the D.J. cranked up “Hava Nagila.” Cece, in a chair in the middle of the dance floor, was lifted up, up, up until she bumped her head on the Chinese umbrellas hanging off the chandelier.

Then she was back on the floor, dancing with her mothers and little sister and singing along with the recording: “Hava neranena, venis’mecha,” or: Let us sing and be glad.

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The joke:

A Jewish sailor docks at Shanghai port and takes off on a walk. From afar, he spies a Magen David and rushes up to the building which, sure enough, turns out to be a synagogue.

The door is open and he peeks in. Sitting there are 9 Chinese men holding siddurim with kippot on their heads.

He bursts in and shouts, "I'm your tenth! We have a minyan."

One man, obviously the gabbai, gets up, places a hand on his shoulder and says, "Funny, but you don't look Jewish."