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BAND Continued from Page 19
From left: Ken Silver, Jason Long, Joe McAnally and President
Clinton Courtesy of Ken Silver
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be on the mark. This was salesmanship, affecting the demeanor
the clients found most attractive. Is there an appreciable difference
in the quality of a wedding band with five horns instead of four,
with three female vocalists instead of two, with or without a break-
dancer? Not really, but if you can quell anxiety about the quality of
the product by adding empty calories, why not?
It’s easy to see this as unscrupulous or morally compromising. What
the righteous don’t understand is that there’s a difference between
being unscrupulous and what the kids today call “getting yours” in
a business where loyalty is fickle, success fleeting and musicianship
often beside the point. Because, even in the most civilized of times,
the talent is often seen as well-dressed, well-paid help.

But it wasn’t cynicism as much as fatigue that prompted my
father’s career pivot back to public education.

In the spring of 1996, the company my dad founded, The
Entertainment Group, folded.

DJs were hot and more economical and didn’t complain (or
complained less) if the clients refused to feed them. Ask a musician
of a certain age if he thinks a DJ is an artist, and then set aside a
good half-hour and make sure you’ve got access to a comfortable
chair and nowhere else to be.

The rise of affordable automated music notwithstanding, the
musical trends had passed my father by. He didn’t have the will
or want to keep up. He had two young sons and was more inter-
ested in coaching Little League and being down the shore during
wedding season, playing tennis and riding his bike.

He thought about whether he could go the rest of his life
without again perceiving the myriad nauseous qualities of hotel
kitchens after midnight, or the dangers that lurk in loading docks
at 2:30 a.m. — dangers like prehistorically sized city rats who
appear as though they’ve evolved to fight back against cats.

He decided he could go without and, to this day, he sees
weddings as right up there with laws and sausages on that list of
things you don’t want to see being made.

The memories of his career as a very minor, hyperlocal celeb-
rity are vivid, though after two decades as a school principal, they
seem remote, another lifetime ago.

As for me, my mother thinks I still want to be a bandleader
— this is her rationale for why I didn’t want to be a lawyer after
getting a law degree.

If I could be paid in pickles from Jack’s Delicatessen, I’d get the
band back together. ❤
msilver@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0737
SIMCHAS JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



A Second Chance
to Make a
First Bat Mitzvah
MATT SILVER | JE STAFF
T he phrase adult bar or bat mitzvah, if not an apparent
contradiction in terms, reads with some incongruity. Why
would you need a bar or bat mitzvah if you’re already an adult?
In a more technical sense, how could you already be an adult
without having had a bar mitzvah? Questions like these might
twist even Maimonides’ brain into an advanced yoga pose. But,
as a practical matter, there are myriad reasons why a Jewish adult
might have not gone through the holy rite of passage as a young
man or woman. The more interesting question might be: Why
would they want one?
What motivates adults balancing jobs, kids, mortgages — what
compels them to seek this knowledge, attain this milestone that
comes with no tangible reward (one would have to think the adult
bar and bat mitzvah’s gift purse typically pales in comparison to
the 13-year-olds)?
According to Rabbi Howard Cove, now the rabbi of Beiteinu
Synagogue, who has led several bat mitzvah classes for adult
women at both Temple Sinai in Dresher and Congregation Kol
Emet in Yardley, there are several reasons, especially for Jewish
1994 Temple Sinai adult Bat Mitzvah class
women of a certain age.

For younger women, Cove suggests, women in their 40s with
kids of their own approaching bar and bat mitzvah age, what it’s
often about (at least in the beginning) is being a good role model,
modeling for their children that Jewish learning and Jewish
customs are important parts of individual life and an important
part of family life.

But for the slightly older bat mitzvah, it’s often about something
more personal.

“You have to remember that the Torah often wasn’t accessible
to girls,” said Cove, referring to women in their 60s, 70s and
beyond whom he has tutored.

See Bat Mitzvah, Page 22
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