Given that I've only once before attended service, I felt completely comfortable with going to my bosses' daughter's bat mitzvah on Saturday. I sang along with most of the songs and I did pretty well with the Hebrew portion of the reciting. Alison Burger did a superb job and I was terribly impressed by her panache. Only 13, she was clearly neither embarrassed nor easily flustered at being the center of a great deal of attention. I marveled at it. I was a monumental dork at her age. I would have died with mortification or awkwardness if my family had said half the nice things hers did in front of the whole congregation. Yet that was the most wonderful part, I think. It was genuinely moving to watch.

Afterwards, at the Kiddush luncheon, I chatted with various family members and old friends of the Burgers while kids raced up and down the aisles or chattered excitedly around the piles of food at the buffet. The food was incredible so they weren't alone up there. I stuffed myself on whitefish salad, whole smoked salmon, lox and bagels, matzoh ball soup, and strudel. Everyone was in a great mood and although I'm out of practice at being around a lot of strangers in big gatherings I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I thought a lot about the ceremony afterwards. It was deeply important to Ali's parents that she had chosen to do the study and preparation necessary for this. Becoming a bat mitzvah is a 20th century innovation, after all, and doesn't have the time-hallowed weight of tradition that becoming a bar mitzvah does. Lots of girls don't want to go to all that trouble. It doesn't make them less Jewish if they don't, of course. It means they feel a certain commitment to their status as a Jew, and they want to make a public statement of their commitment. I sat in the synagogue, and looked around me at the luncheon, and I found myself wishing I'd known that sort of certainty when I was a younger person.

In the evening there was a huge party at a local University Club. Naturally, there was a ton of food again, all of it delicious. I had as much sushi as I could eat (14 pieces, if you must know). There was an open bar which was crowded with adults, and a coffee bar which was crowded with the teenage contingent. They were sucking back lattes and capuccinos like you wouldn't believe. I was surprised, to be honest. No one I knew drank coffee until we got to college. Fortunately, the youth were in their own section of the club, off to the side, where they could release all that crazy caffeine-fueled energy until it was time to hit the dance floor.

Before dinner commenced, our hosts cheerfully insisted that everyone get out onto the dance floor to do some Israeli folk dancing. I did the right thing, for I am not a chump, but I am here to tell you I loathe being forced to dance. It's an easily traced consequence of 7th grade p.e. class when we did two weeks of folk dancing ("From Around The World!") and my partner was David Nudelbaum. He traumatized me by refusing to hold my hand. You've danced folk dances, right? You have to hold hands, or put your arms around someone's waist, and hop around in a hideously undignified manner. Well, it was bad enough to be forced to do this in a blue gym suit with actual boys, but when David wouldn't hold my hand it just about killed me. We compromised by crooking one finger and linking that way. So there we were, two dozen or so gawky, unhappy adolescents, hopping and grapevining around the gym floor in 1969, all holding hands except for me and David who were trying to schottische with our fingers crooked together. It was, I can tell you, nightmarish. Doing the hora with a group of strangers who'd been drinking was actually an improvement.

I finally went home around midnight, so you can see I sufficiently overcame the early trauma to enjoy myself. It was an amazing evening, and the whole experience of service and bat mitzvah and joyous celebration made me very proud of my Jewish heritage. I wish I had grown up with this.