Bat Mitzvah planning

I am officially in the mode.

The planning and preparing for a Bat Mitzvah mode.
I have done this before. Twice.

A Bar Mitzvah for DB in which I cooked for over 200 hundred people all by myself (OK, with a lot of wonderful helpers).

And a Bat Mitzvah for MB where we cooked and ate in a house that wasn’t even ours. (Long story short: we were about to move to Israel and had sold the house that Friday morning. All our furniture was out, but the new owners were nice enough to let us use the house for the meals. We borrowed tables and chairs and made a very nice time of it.)

Now, I’m trying to plan a simple and cost-effective Bat Mitzvah in still unfamiliar territory. NED is simple, so planning is easy. But it’s so easy to get carried away in new and creative ideas. I have to keep reminding myself what is important.

NED is giggly with excitement. I find that as long as I’m telling her what’s going on day by day, she feels included and is happy. I can tell she’s getting nervous though. She doesn’t do well up in front of crowds. (She stopped half way through a speech at DB’s Bar Mitzvah and started crying. She couldn’t finish out of pure embarrassment.) We’ll see how she manages being the center of attention now…

MB was the first Bat Mitzvah in my family. My brother who has lived here in Israel for over 10 years, made a Bat Mitzvah in June, but kept it VERY low key. They didn’t even send out invitations. They had a meal in their home for family and very close friends. The Bat Mitzvah girl didn’t speak. It was a modest and meaningful celebration for my neice.

This is NED’s celebration, not mine. If I want her to have meaning in becoming a Bat Mitzvah, the perspective has to be constantly kept in check.

I’m trying to hold the balance. Somewhere between meaningful and modest, and fun and creative. And on a very limited budget.

So tomorrow after I take my car into Jerusalem to get serviced, I need to finish the invitations and start thinking menu.

I just continue to make decisions and run them by Ari. Full steam ahead…

Simple and meaningful.

Fun and creative.