| If someone has reached age 41 before celebrating his bar mitzvah (*) I
would guess that he is not quite ready for Talmud. Also, the volumes
that Deborah refers to are probably the Steinsaltz edition and are
rather expensive (~$45 each). Not to go down a rathole, but it
depends partly on how much you want to spend. When I am not certain of
what would be appropriate I usually give a gift certificate from Kolbo
or IBS for a multiple of $18 (**).
Aaron
{optional reading :^) }
* The term `bar mitzvah' means `age of responsibility' but the term
has (in the U.S., at least) acquired the secondary meaning of referring
to the celebration that is usually held when a child reaches that age.
Part of the celebration typically involves participating in aspects of
the religious service that are normally reserved for adults,
demonstrating that one has acquired the appropriate ritual skills. If
a person has never done this and later does acquire the skills, he
certainly can mark the occasion of first participating in the rites; by
extension this is often referred to as a `bar mitzvah' although it
isn't.
** The number is derived from the numeric value of the word for
`life' in Hebrew. Letters can have numeric value, as with Roman
numerals (e.g. the word `MIX' would be 1009). Thus, $18 is considered
an auspicious number and gifts, charitable contributions, etc. are
often given in multiples of that number.
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| The people at Kolbo are *very* nice with suggestions for gifts, and
they have nice merchandise (no schlocky stuff!). Thye have really
beautiful tallisim, if you can afford them! Also framed posters and
things.
The last time I was in the Israel bookstore, a lady was there
"auditionning" whole boxes of shofars. She was buying about three
relatives shofars as bar mitzvah gifts, and wanted to make sure that
the ones she bought were actually playable as well as nice looking. Of
course, she was buying them for 13-year-olds, but I thought that was
kind of a neat idea (depending on the boys involved, I suppose - could
be viewed less kindly by their parents, if they are noisy kids anyhow!
- but I am assuming they are musical children anyways). They have
quite a selection of other things, too, of course.
/Charlotte
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