A Bat Mitzvah Guide To The High Holidays

Repentance, Prayer, and Deeds of Kindness: The words and teachings of Rabbi Arthur Green can serve as a spiritual guide to our observance of Rosh HaShanah.  Eighteen Voices can move us mystically through the Kol Nidre into the solemnity of Yom Kippur. 

But it takes a "little red-haired girl with a chic babushka" to really get us into the spirit of the Highest of the High Holidays - Fashion Week!

Marjorie Ingall has written a masterful article in Tablet Magazine that proclaims "G-d is in the details and the fringes of Chanel garments."

A little red-haired girl with a chic babushka (Marimekko?) practices reading her bat mitzvah speech into a camera held by her doting dad. She tells the camera that fashion is part of her heritage as a Jew (“History tells us that as far back as Arnold Scaasi … ”) and that the People of the Book are also known as The People of the Cloth. 

Abq Jew believes it may be time for a Parody Alert! 

It turns out that Fashion Week High Holidays Bat Mitzvah Speech Practice By Hannah is not a real Bat Mitzvah speech. It’s a comic piece by writer Bob Morris, a style writer, frequent contributor to The New York Times and author of Assisted Loving, a memoir about double-dating with his elderly father. Hannah is played by his tennis partner’s daughter.

"My oldest memories of long days of High Holiday services on Long Island always were mixed with memories of women dressing for each other,” he says. “We had style, judgment, and atonement all under one roof.” Writing the script for the video took him several days and multiple rewrites. To prepare, he watched dozens of b’nai mitzvot speeches on YouTube ...“They all follow the same template,” he says.

Ms Ingall thinks the video is hilarious, but also thinks "it could be a great opportunity for families and religious leaders to talk about what a bar or bat mitzvah speech is supposed to be."  Abq Jew supposes that he agrees.