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Prepping for a Long Island Bar Mitzvah

Let the fireworks begin

by
Adam Chandler
August 15, 2012
(Flickr)
(Flickr)

While I’m confident that not all bar and bat mitzvahs on Long Island are like the one I’m about to describe, the following things did happen recently during the planning of a bar mitzvah on Long Island:

• The father of the bar mitzvah boy decided that an awesome fireworks show was necessary to end the bar mitzvah.

• The father approached his congressman to expedite slow-in-coming government permits for said awesome fireworks show.

• The permits arrived following the congressional lobbying of the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and local Southampton officials, and despite concerns about the nesting Piping Plover birds in the ecologically fragile wetlands in Southampton.

• The father tried to receive a refund from the fireworks company after debris from the fireworks caused $7,500 worth of a damage to a neighbor’s Bentley.

• The congressman received a $5,000 contribution that may place him at the center of an ethics probe.

I spoke to Stephanie Butnick, Tablet’s resident Long Island historian, who had this to say:

I’m just upset there weren’t fireworks at my bat mitzvah. And can I get an invite to the Sweet 16?

Tim Bishop’s bar mitzvah episode could spell trouble. [Politico]

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.