In recent decades, dedicated mitzvah planners have turned the Jewish milestone into an all-out bash. But during the pandemic, business has dried up.
By Joe Lovinger • @j_lovinger
The challah was 35,000 feet in the air, hurtling across the Midwest at hundreds of miles per hour, just as Susie Blumenfeld planned it. The bread was just one item in a gift box full of gear on this flight, headed for a bar mitzvah a la Zoom. Next to it were a yarmulke, a box of grape juice and a customized face mask with “ZG,” the celebrant’s initials, printed on the right cheek. More than 70 boxes just like it were airborne or on the road as Blumenfeld put the finishing touches on her first pandemic-era mitzvah. She was nervous.
Blumenfeld is the founder of Pink House Productions, an event planning business that specializes in bar and bat mitzvahs. She puts together high-end celebrations for families living in Manhattan and its wealthy exurbs, like Westchester County and Westport, Connecticut, where she lives. Blumenfeld and other businesses like hers constitute a boutique industry of specialized mitzvah planners. Since the pandemic began in March, though, business has been sparse.
“My business is the most dead business as a result of COVID. There is no other business that is as affected as ours,” Blumenfeld told prox. in an interview over Zoom. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does not specifically track the event-planning business, data from the government agency suggest that the industry is likely one of the hardest hit; similar industries that depend on large, in-person gatherings, like spectator sports, amusements, recreation, and museums experienced a 27% decrease in employees in the last year, the seventh-largest drop of the more than 160 industries the BLS tracked in that time span. The pandemic has been particularly challenging for planners like Blumenfeld who operate in the Northeast, where stricter social distancing requirements have cancelled and severely limited in-person gatherings. Meanwhile, cold weather and a lengthy vaccine distribution process promise to limit gatherings for at least the next few months.
Blumenfeld says her business began to feel the effects of the pandemic in March, when customers started postponing events. “My people weren’t canceling, they were postponing. But then they started postponing two or three times. At first, people were only postponing for like, a month. No one thought we’d be a year out.” But here we are. Cases are on the rise and mass-vaccination remains elusive. After years of building her business, Blumenfeld is back to square one, planning bar mitzvah parties in a year with little else to celebrate. But her business is evolving along with her process, and it is far from the first time b’nai mitzvah have molded to fit their times.
The first bar mitzvah as we now conceive of them was probably observed around 800 years ago, according to Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side. Jewish people have spoken and chanted the Torah aloud for even longer, but likely began to fuse such performances with a child’s entry into adulthood in the Middle Ages. In the intervening centuries, while the Torah reading has remained, other parts of the bar mitzvah have evolved significantly. “This custom, like all living traditions, changes over time. It becomes embellished and adds layer upon layer of new customs and creativity,” said Hirsch. The practice has always adapted to the challenges and values of its times, and the coronavirus has forced congregations to get creative. According to Hirsch, Stephen Wise was prepared from the start.
More strictly observant congregations, particularly Orthodox ones, have struggled to adhere to both tradition and pandemic-era regulations, due to constraints around the Jewish Sabbath, Shabbat. While reform synagogues like Stephen Wise can stream services live, many Orthodox synagogues do not use technology or electricity on Shabbat. Less conservative congregations, however, have implemented a host of changes to conduct bar mitzvahs during the pandemic. At Stephen Wise, when the synagogue was able to re-open in September under tight guidelines, Hirsch began inviting families to hold their b’nai mitzvah in his 900-seat sanctuary. While they all remain masked and seated in blocks by household, Hirsch said the smaller gatherings have had an unexpectedly positive impact on the observants. “While they are experiencing loss and regret that they’re not able to celebrate in the way that they always imagined, at the same time, they are surprised and moved by how deeply they feel the experience of just being in a sanctuary that has fewer people and focusing solely on the service itself and on the accomplishment.” He has also installed three high-definition cameras capable of live-streaming the events to any guests uncomfortable with attending in person. In all, 14 of his congregants turned 13 during the pandemic, and he offered all of them the opportunity to either postpone or observe virtually. None accepted. All 14 families felt strongly that they wanted to hold the ceremony in person, in the synagogue. So far, all have gone off without a hitch.
After recognizing their child’s accomplishment, many families also want to celebrate. Typically, a child will have spent years studying Hebrew and the Torah in after-school classes, as well as performing some form of community service. In the ceremony itself, the bar mitzvah reads, chants and sings in an unfamiliar language in front of all his friends and family. It is a taxing process that is typically one of the child’s most significant achievements to date. For many families, the celebration afterward is a nice dinner with close friends and family. But for others, including Blumenfeld’s clientele, it is a major event in and of itself.
For a sports fan, there is the Yankee Stadium Party Suite or MetLife Stadium Coaches’ Club. As Barbara Thibault, the former director of events at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Westchester told Westchester, one can host a no-holds-barred Bar Mitzvah bash at the hotel for $100,000 (well, almost no-holds-barred: according to Thibault, “a bar mitzvah boy wanted to drive into the ballroom in a mini gas-operated race car, but you legally are not allowed to have oil and fuel inside a building. So instead, he operated a motorized car, which preceded him into the ballroom”).
The pandemic has also brought incredible uncertainty into a business built on long-term planning. Blumenfeld said hosting b’nai mitzvah during the pandemic has required even more work and creativity from her and her team. Yet, she said, she often finds parents resistant to pay her standard price, even though “[i]t takes so much more of my time and my thinking.”
In one weekend alone, Blumenfeld had to improvise entire plans on the fly for two seperate b’not mitzvahs. The first, which was set to be held at Willow Ridge Country Club in Harrison, was thrown into disarray the morning of the event when a kitchen staff member tested positive for COVID-19. The following day, a different client had to scrap her entire plan because she learned a friend, with whom she had been boating the previous weekend, had just tested positive. “You can plan, plan, plan, plan, which we did in both these cases, and in one second, it’s like, poof, all of a sudden you have to switch to plan B.”
Once the challah was back on the ground and in the hands of the 75 virtual guests, Blumenfeld’s work was done. While she normally does not attend the services of her clients because she is too busy setting up for the party, she logged into Zoom and watched as the boy read his haftarah into the camera set up in his living room. “In some ways, it was much more intimate than being in a sanctuary. You were in their home. I felt like I was brought into their life more. I didn’t have to set up a party, so I watched, and it was really nice.”
Bio: Joe Lovinger is a journalist based in New York City. He covers religion for prox., and has previously written about politics, the jewelry trade, and books. His hobbies include cooking, golfing, and bothering his friends with pictures of his dogs.
