Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories

Typical United States Bat Mitzvah Speech (circa 1992-1995)

Extremely important in Jewish communities of the Late Twentieth Century Clintonian Dynasty was the widespread practice of Bat Mitzvah, in which participants were made to engage in feats of strength, stamina and other physical trials in order to prove their fertility (in the males’ case, virility), followed by an elaborate celebration designed to display the wealth and power of the clan, known as “witz[1]” or “vitz.”  While archeologists have unearthed ample evidence of written and oral examinations administered throughout adolescence in nearly all ethic and religious divisions of the period, among Jews, a people known to place an unusually high premium on intellect and academic achievement, such displays of intellectual prowess were of particular import. The following text is a simulation of one such address a typical female adolescent may have delivered to her family’s guests at the conclusion of Bat Mitzvah, reconstructed by a team of historians and ethnopaleontologists at the University of Shanghai, using the surviving literature, television, and electronic communication of the period, as well as the landmark archaelogical find known as the Shukert Cache excavated from beneath ruins in the region of Oma-Ha in the former United States of America, a collection of fragmented letters, diaries, and other documents seemingly preserved by the large amounts of radioactive fallout in the area.  This text first appeared as part of the Shanghai Historical Society’s traveling exhibition “When God Mattered: Understanding Religion and Magic in the American Empire.”  It was  translated from the original Mandarin by the author. 

 

“Dear Friends, Family, Jewish Kids From Hebrew School That, No Offense, I Don’t Really Consider Friends, Distant Cousins I Have Never Met Before, and All The Old People Who Are Friends Of My Grandparents That My Parents Didn’t Want To Invite:

Thank you all for celebrating with me as I become a Bat Mitzvah!

God!  Old People, do you mind?  Already with the sucking candy[2] and the dentures?  Do you know how repulsive that is to people who can still hear?  Slurp, slurp, slurp—it’s like we can feel your teeth sliding around against your gums. Come on!  It’s one thing when the rabbi is speaking.  He gets to do this every week.  But this is me!  This is my only chance to make a speech like, ever, and my mom bought me this suit that cost like almost $200[3] and God!  I mean, G-d!

Okay, fine.  Don’t mind me.  Go ahead and suck.  Slurp those root beer barrels[4] that have been in your purse since the Carter administration during my speech.  My speech of the only Bat Mitzvah I will ever have.  Just go ahead.  I don’t care if you hate me.  You think I care?  Everybody already hates me anyway, especially my mother. But not as much as I hate her. 

Maybe that was a mistake.  Saying how much I hate my mother, right here on the bimah[5], in front of the big thing of the Ten Commandments, one of which is “Honor thy Father and Mother.”  God is probably pissed.  He’s probably staring down through that window at the very top of the ceiling where I thought he lived when I was little, planning his revenge, because what kind of a person thinks such things about her mother?  Instant death would be too good for such a person.  He’ll probably give me leukemia, or juvenile diabetes or make me get really fucking fat, like, out of nowhere.  Oh shit!  I just cussed.  I’m sorry!  And I now I said “shit” too although everyone, even G-d, knows that “shit” isn’t as bad a word as “fuck,” because fuck is the worst cuss word except I hear they can say it on T.V. now in England.  America is so lame sometimes.   Anyway, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to cuss, not standing here in front of the ark with all the Torahs that they saved from synagogues in Poland where all the Jews got killed by the Nazis.[6]

I should have made this speech have something to do with Nazis—that’s always a crowd pleaser, and at least something I know a lot about.  But people might think I’m weird, like one of those weird militaristic semi-goths who wear, like, old Wermacht jackets and eyeliner to school, and besides, the Nazis aren’t in the Torah, at least, not yet.  Probably someday.  In Hebrew school they’re all basically just Nazis under another name, the Canaanites and the Amalekites and the Philistines and the Jebusites, all the people in the bible that tried to destroy us.  There sure have been a lot of them.  I mean, standing here in front of you all, it’s kind of amazing that we’re still here, doing our traditions and everything.  Oh well.  I guess it’s just a matter of time.