Memories of My Bar Mitzvah

I was a deer in the headlights on my bar mitzvah day.

As a rite of passage, my bar mitzvah fell somewhere between African teens sticking their penis in a wasp’s nest and New Guinea boys thrusting sharp arrows through their tongues. The memories are murky. I recall a feud between my two grandfathers hearkening back to my circumcision when I was eight days old. My paternal grandfather Sam, an Orthodox Jew, wanted a first-time mohel to perform my bris. My maternal grandfather Al, a secular…