The Best Friends’ Speech

While the eighteenth century philosopher Voltaire has been branded an anti-semite, the man’s writing clearly points to a political and religious tolerance that is beyond reproach, and a set of values that surely all Jews should share.  Nonetheless I feel obliged to take issue with him, or at least with his admirer and advocate, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who epitomised Voltaire with the quote “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.  I take issue because it’s clear that neither of them ever attended a batmitvah party.  If they had surely an unequivocal qualification would have been included in this defence of free speech, for there isn’t a person on the planet who can seriously justify the best friends’ speech given at a girl’s batmitzvah.

The Lynne Truss’s amongst you may at this point be bristling at my use of the apostrophe in “friends’ ”.  This is no grammatical error. As anyone who has witnessed one of these abominations of public speaking will attest, there are always at least three, and usually in excess of five best friends to torture the guests.  If you ask the batmitzvah girl about this peculiar plurality she will explain that her best friends are ranked from “best best friend” down to “worst best friend”, a position that rests the width of a cigarette paper from all her other friends.  What she doesn’t understand is the futility of this whole exercise because within three months her best friends will be her worst enemies and her new best friends will be whichever girls have invited her to make a speeches at their batvitzvahs.

The format and content of the best friends’ speech is so standardised that one only need attend three batmitzvah parties to acquire sufficient competence to deliver it oneself.  I therefore fully expect readers to know all this, but for those who have just arrived from the age of enlightenment here’s what happens.

The best friends stand in a row each holding a copy of the text, passing a microphone up and down the line as the words are revealed, one by one, girl by girl. At some point there’s bound to be an error in this choreography but it doesn’t matter because the whole thing is such an incomprehensible shambles anyway.

This one word relay is unsustainable and it stretches to sentences as the speech evolves into a cutesy version of Monty Python’s four Yorkshire-men sketch – “we’ve been best friends since our first day at senior school two weeks ago”, “we’ve been best friends since we met at tap dancing when we were five years old”, “we’ve been best friends since NCT classes” and then finally one girl trumps all with, “our mums were childhood best friends so we’ve been best friends longer than we’ve been alive!”

No best friends’ speech is complete without the obligatory “you were amaaaazing this morning in shul and you look really amaaaaazing tonight”.  It doesn’t matter that the words were composed several days previously or that the speaker in question was not in shul that morning owing to a fitting appointment for the dress she’ll be wearing at her own Batmitzvah.

Another essential component is a poem, again collectively written.  Truthfully it is less a poem than a series of clichés, some of which vaguely rhyme with each other.  Remembering that most of these girls attend expensive private schools it’s staggering how poor their imagination and command of English proves to be.  If I were a parent I’d be straight to the head-teacher demanding a full refund of the fees.

Finally, the ten-minutes of respite from the evening’s enjoyment is rounded off with the presentation of some useless piece of artwork that will have been painstakingly cobbled together using in-jokes and photographs.  The girls will be supremely proud of their joint effort, representing as it does the amaaaazing time they spent together constructing it and proof of their unimpeachable admiration for the batmitzvah girl.  The recipient will be not the slightest bit interested in it because it didn’t come from Hollister.  It will therefore arrive home from the party crumpled and torn where it will languish in the corner of the girl’s bedroom before eventually finding its sad and neglected way into the bin once those best friends have morphed into the worst enemies they were always destined to become.

It would be nice to imagine a future without best friends’ speeches but like Voltaire’s Candide, I’m not optimistic.

Simcha on a shoestring

It’s a well worn cliché but that doesn’t detract from its veracity: the recession is affecting everyone, and that includes certain people I know who would never have imagined in a million years that they would need to delay the purchase of a new Merc by a month.  I tell you, some people are really suffering.

 

My friend Moshe was only able to go two Shabboses before people started to speculate as to why he was in shul but his Merc wasn’t in its usual parking space around the corner.  He was able to shrug it off for a while by pretending the car was being serviced, “Those Nazi’s” he complained, “they say they’re the greatest engineers in the world so why can’t they get my sun roof to close properly?  It’s deliberate!”  After a while however, people stopped believing him, and he was forced to admit the embarrassing truth; the economic conditions had forced him to apply for a Freedom Card.  The upside of this for Moshe is that he is now able to get off the bus outside shul rather than two stops away.

 

What makes it worse for Jews is that living in a tight-knit community there’s enormous pressure on us to put on a good show regardless of our financial circumstances.  I find myself in exactly this difficult place at the moment.

 

Thanks to the Almight my daughter, the apple of my eye (crab), is to be wed in the spring and Mrs J is insisting on a simcha that puts every other simcha in the history of spoilt Jewish girls and nebbishe Jewish boys to shame.  My wife has little interest in the financial pressure we, along with the rest of the world, are under.  Her knowledge of current affairs does not extend beyond Radlett.  (Still, there are enough affairs going on there to keep her ears flapping for a good long time so it’s probably just as well).

 

So I’ve had to do some thinking and I’d like to share a few ideas that are guaranteed to ensure a spectacular simcha on a shoestring.

 

1      Select your shul carefully.  Some are much cheaper to join than others and many will do a deal if you ask.  My research tells me that you can find some desperate ones out in the sticks, and while they might not have proper rabbis the advantage is that fewer guests will travel to them and that will further allow you to keep your costs down.

 

2      Go for quality rather than quantity.  A smaller do will save you a fortune and you can announce it as very exclusive to those who might have expected an invitation.  Be ruthless even if that means not inviting close family.  The only criteria upon which you should decide who’s to be on your guest list is wealth.  The advantages to this are manifold.  You’ll be able to hire a tiny venue, many of the invitees will probably not come because they’ll be at some fancy charity do, and they’ll send a good gift anyway.  Your simcha will have a better ROI than General Electric.

 

3      Of course it would be entirely inappropriate to ask people to stump up for their drinks.  Gentiles may like a pay bar but frankly, for me, that’s a non-starter.  There’s no money to be made from selling alcohol to Jews.  However at my precious girl’s wedding one of the table decorations will be a dish with a label simply saying “Thank you”.

 

4      While it is forbidden to get married during the Omer there is no prohibition against having the party then, so here’s a nifty tip:  make sure you have other plans for Lag B’omer and arrange for the wedding party to take place on some other date during the 49 days.  The restrictions on entertainment will mean you save a packet by not hiring a band or discotheque.  Instead, borrow a selection of board games from your friends.

 

5      Finally, you know all those benschers you’ve been collecting from Barmitzvahs and weddings over the years?  Well cross out the names and dates and write in the details for your own do.

 

So there you have it.  Eat your heart out Money Mensch.

 

 

 

Intolerance Begins at Home

I’m not proud of the divisions in our community.  It’s clear to me that we are happier arguing with each other than working together, and given the increased noise from those who would criticise Jews from without, this seems to me a terrible shame.

What I find particularly unfortunate is the separation in every way between those who try to adapt their Judaism to the modern world and the ultra-orthodox communities who are attempting to hold on as much as possible to the values, lifestyle and culture of the “old country”.  We may as well be from different galaxies so poor is the level of mutual understanding.

Sadly the differences between us are superficial and sustained by suspicion and unfamiliarity rather than anything of substance.  As the following account shows, the potential for deeper understanding between both sides is not only possible, it is crucially important for the survival of future generations of British Jews.

Last Sunday with three friends packed into my car I drove to Stamford Hill and parked up outside a house that looked as if it may be home to a Jewish family; a three-foot high mezuzah was attached to the doorpost.  We drew lots and, inevitably, I lost.  I tentatively made my way up to the house and rang the doorbell.  It buzzed tonelessly for a second or two before fading into dull indifference.  Presently four boisterous children all under the age of six came bounding to the door.   On opening it they were suddenly silenced as they regarded my shaven face and unusual garb (I was wearing a pair of chinos, an open necked checked shirt and a sports jacket).

“Is your daddy home?” I asked in my sweetest voice.  They ran off shouting something in Yiddish.  Eventually a man with a straggly grey beard, a tired white open neck shirt under a plain back suit and tsit-tsit to his knees came to the door.  Rather than staring at me as if I had dropped by from the planet Zog as his children had done, he took to me with the suspicion of a man who had been mugged twice that morning.  Not a bad assessment given what was about to take place.

“Can I help you?” he politely asked.

“I’m collecting for University College School,” I explained.  “The fees are going up and there are many children from north-west London whose parents are struggling to make ends meet in these difficult economic times.  Please help.”

“Vos is University College School?  It’s a university? A college? A school?  …It’s certainly not a yeshiva I know of.”

“It’s a private school where they teach the boys to be captains of industry and leaders of society.  Half the pupils are Jewish.  Only times are hard and if we are not helped by other Jews our boys will have to go to the local comprehensive school where they’ll suffer anti-semitic abuse and end up working in local government or something equally dreadful.  Please,” I said, holding out my cupped hand while staring at his unpolished shoes, “Tsedakah.”

“What?”

“Please help to pay for my son’s schooling.”

“Why?  It’s not a Jewish school.  They don’t spend all day davening and learning Kodesh.  Why should I make a contribution?  Hashem wants Jewish children to attend Jewish schools, not College University School.”

Rising to the challenge I responded sharply to his objection.  “The reason you should help me is because when my son grows up you’ll be knocking on his door asking for money and if you don’t help him to get a good education he won’t be able to afford to give you anything for your schools and yeshivas.  Think of it as an investment in your grandchildren’s future.”

“Fair enough.  Here’s a fiver.”

“Is that all?”

“What?”

“Is that all? Whenever you people come schnorrering in Hendon you look at whatever I give as if it’s been lining the cat litter tray for a week.  Isn’t it de rigueur to hold out for more?

“De rigueur?  Vos is de rigueur?”

“Oh never mind.  See you next time,” and with that I turned on my heels.

I returned to the car giving the chaps the thumbs up.  Five minutes later Melvin did the same thing, followed by Howard, and finally Stephen.  We then moved on to the next house we could find with a big mezuzah which just happened to be next door, and so the afternoon continued.

As I sat in my armchair that evening I reflected on how my prejudice has determined my attitude to the ultra-orthodox. It’s time, I thought, to be much more accepting of these people.  They may be bigoted and intolerant, but they only ask to be allowed to live their lives in their own way.  Amongst the many things that Judaism has taught me is to love the stranger that sojourneth with me as myself, so how much more should I love a fellow Jew, even if he is stranger than most of the gentiles I know?

Now, forgive me but I must turn my attention a small local issue.  A reform rabbi is visiting our shul for a simcha this Shabbat and the family has asked for him to be given an aliyah.  What an utter outrage.  I must write to my Rabbi to object.