A Very Vegas Bar Mitzvah

Norm had a fantastic piece today about something really, really terrifying that is fated to become the next reality series, "My Super Bar Mitzvah."

Get this: Some Vegas JAP's parents rented out the entire Fashion Show Mall last Saturday night. They hired actors to pretend that they're paparazzi as the 100 tween guests entered on a purple (?) carpet. The guest of honor, Erica Jill Fieldman (that's her above), got to direct a fashion show with professional models, family and friends walking the mall runway. There were confetti cannons, more than 300 guests total and "prominent designers." The child got to direct the fashion show, playing "the bitch fashion designer."

Read all about it here and note the most pathetic part of all: It was Erica Jill's mommy, Amy Fieldman, who apparently told all to Norm, including being proud of her "bitch" daughter. She brags about this outlandish indulgence! Her daughter now knows that over-the-top conspicuous consumption to the tune of $500,000 is A-OK in a world of such poverty and loss, surely a lesson her rabbi would be proud of. Heck, throw a nice party for $50,000 and take the kid to Kansas to have her see what $450,000 can do to put back together the shattered lives of those folks flattened by thoe tornadoes this spring.

Full disclosure: My own Bar Mitzvah back in 1985 was a black-tie, lavish affair at a Long Island country club that featured a crew of actors dressed in bizarre costumes to dance with the 200 guests (only about 15 of whom were my friends) and lead me through a weird dance number for the crowd. that's me to your right. Like the Fieldmans, my folks were caught up in this uniquely Jewish race to throw the best BM party among their peers.

That doesn't make it right. What it does is raise spoiled brats with an outsized sense of entitlement and no concept of charity. It took me years to discover that there were poor and disadvantaged people in the world and that I can help if I live less extravagantly.

I'm off this weekend to my niece's Bat Mitzvah in the Philly suburbs. I can assure you it will be a pleasant but unspectacular affair, except that it will be spectacular because we'll all be proud of my niece.