You might think the new Adam Sandler movie that dropped this weekend on Netflix, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, is a slight comedy about a Jewish ritual that he produced to give his two teenage daughters co-starring roles in.
Well, yes, but also no.
If you eliminate the Holocaust, Neil Simon and the neurotic angst of the typical adult Jewish male as subject matter or author, the list of mainstream American feature films filled with Jews at the center grows pretty small.
Oh, sure there are some, but well, not all that many.
So it was with great intrigue that I spent my Saturday night with the Sandler family. (Note: Sunny Sandler is the star, Sadie Sandler co-stars, Adam Sandler plays a key supporting role, and even his real-life wife, Jackie Sandler, appears in a small part).
And, may I say, they did not disappoint.
To have fictional Jewish siblings, family and friends casually fill a space that is mostly reserved for white bread John Hughes-esque characters living cleverly in a typical American suburban landscape felt new and, actually, sort of groundbreaking for a wide-release American feature.
Especially since the so particularly Jewish story beats they were engaging in were more than ably filling in the space of the most thematically typical studio coming of age scenario imaginable.
And, trust me, I know where of I speak.
It was 30 years ago this year that a movie I wrote loosely based on my family and the events that led to my bar mitzvah, Family Prayers, was released.
And though it was more of a drama with only some comedic elements, at the time the script was considered too specific, too niche and too…okay, let’s face it, Jewish, to have even a snowball’s chance in hell of breaking into the mainstream.
And that was if the film was made perfectly (Note: As if THAT exists), which ultimately it wasn’t.
Not that I was thinking about any of that back then.
It just seemed like a good way to tell the story about the disintegration of my parents’ marriage, my Dad’s gambling addiction and a kids’ (Note: Um, my) confusion about, well, what it means to be an adult.
So I only wrote it as a writing sample that could show off my talents and maybe get me work of some kind, any kind, since I knew:
a. Action movies and Saturday matinee sci-fi/comic book stories were what was commercial
b. I was squeamish with blood and the only comics I read were Archie, Betty and Veronica, and…
c. A Jewish kid or family going through anything particularly Jewish, except maybe Nazis, was simply not considered a thing.
Did I hold out small secret hope it would get made? Sure, in the same way I briefly fantasized about being straight some years before.
But we all are who we are, right?
So it was with great defiance that I decided to write about one of the worst, yet dramatically fertile moments of my then relatively short Semitic life.
That, in itself, was ironic. Truth be told, NO ONE in my family EVER even went to temple. Still, we were culturally Jewish. What this meant for me, and many other Jews who came of age when I did, was:
a. We celebrated a handful of key Jewish holidays over family dinners, sans prayers.
b. We ate a lot of lox, bagels, deli food and brisket (Note: And Chinese food on Sunday nights. Don’t ask me why this is even Jewish but on the east coast it sort of was/is), and:
c. We kvelled (aka basked in pride) when Barbra Streisand became a movie star and Steve and Eydie (Note: Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme) appeared on TV.
Oy vey.
I guess that’s one of the things I appreciated about You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah. Based on a 2001 novel by Fiona Rosenbloom, it’s essentially a story about teen culture, Jewish culture and a Jewish girl who is rolling her eyes at everyone and everything except for her own needs.
It’s funny and silly and mean and sad and infuriating and, ultimately sort of meaningful. It takes apart Jewish friendships and family life in sweetly relatable ways that weren’t available back when I came of age. And even if they were, the specific worlds they were offering were certainly not deemed broadly relatable.
When I wrote my screenplay in the eighties I chose an event from my life I figured would work as a structuring device to explore my world.
But what I discovered in the writing was that my bar mitzvah, and what it turned out to be – a VERY pared down SMALL reception due to a lot of family drama – really did symbolize my coming of age.
What I get from the Sandler movie is a bit of the polar opposite. A coming of age story that is very much about a bat mitzvah girl and the Jewish kids, and even non-Jewish kids, who surround her.
The ritual, even as it is sometimes played for comic effect, is as important a part of her life as her parents, siblings and friends she fails but ultimately learns to appreciate.
She’s a Jewish girl/woman the movie offers for audiences to embrace, rather than a kid who just happens to be Jewish that a film is asking audiences to listen to.
And to me, that feels like progress.
Even if bat and bar mitzvahs have never been your things at all. Or never will be.
Adam Sandler – “Bar Mitzvah Boy”
notes from a chair 