Is Bracing for a Change
THE BEST IDEA?
There’s nothing quite like the combination of
puberty and peaking in Jewish adulthood:
You walk up to the pulpit, prep to
pronounce prayers from the Torah, then
suddenly pause to pull leftover bagel
from your braces.

Avoiding casualties like this one are
what prompts many preteens to get their
braces removed for their Bar or Bat Mitzvah,
then get them put back on after the big day.

In this reporter’s day, getting braces was in itself
a rite of passage: You could choose which rubber band
colors to get on the metal brackets to match holidays, or choose
clear bands in an attempt to make the metal invisible (though it
really just made your teeth look bulgier).

Looking back at my own Bat Mitzvah
photos, I made the wise decision of picking
turquoise rubber bands to match my teal
BCBG dress, which also matched the fake
blue flowers I held in a photo shoot that my
brother took in our backyard. There may
or may not have been blue eye shadow
involved. (I just really, really liked blue, OK?)
Nostalgia aside, braces have served a
purpose in one form or another dating all the
way back to ancient Egypt.

According to Colgate, archaeologists have uncovered
mummies with metal bands around their teeth, and catgut — a
type of cord made from fibers found in animal intestines — tied
to the bands to provide pressure and move the teeth.

See Bracing, Page 34
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM SIMCHAS
MARCH 23, 2017
33 Top: djiledesign; Rubberbands: flyparade/iStock/Thinkstock.com
RACHEL KURLAND | JE STAFF