Last weekend we traveled to Richmond, Virginia for the Bar Mitzvah of my second cousin, Joshua. This was the first Bar Mitzvah I’ve been to since my own on October 26th, 1985 – nearly 25 years ago.
Time out for trivia: Do you want to know how I remembered the exact date of my Bar Mitzvah? October 26th, 1985 just happens to be the date on which Marty McFly goes back in time in the movie “Back to the Future”, one of my all-time favorite movies.
This event also served as sort of an unofficial Levine family reunion. I know some families have big reunions every year but the only official family reunion I’ve ever been to was a Miller family reunion that was held in Washington, D.C. back in 1989 (and we were far off on a side branch of that family tree). Other then that, nothing else from either side of my family tree until this past weekend. On the Levine side, this was probably the first large celebratory family event since my own Bar Mitzvah. (If you’re thinking I forgot my own wedding, that was a very small and low-key event.)
Enough with the set-up. On with the actual story.
We left for Richmond on Friday. I wanted to leave between 9 and 10 a.m. but we didn’t even leave the area until noon. Luckily we hit no traffic and the drive to Richmond took only 5 hours; shorter than we expected even with several pit stops. The reason we got a late start was because we first had to stop by Sandi’s house and drop off Boomer for the weekend. We also borrowed her portable DVD player and a Garmin GPS (more on that later).
We arrived in Richmond around 5 p.m. and my mom arrived shortly after us, but she left much earlier in the morning because she drove all the way down from New York along with other relatives. Maegan and Darah were thrilled to see her and my Aunt Barbara. Then the continuous introductions to long lost family members and family members I didn’t even know soon followed.
The next morning we met for breakfast and then off to the actual Bar Mitzvah in downtown Richmond. We were all given directions and a map but I decided to use the GPS that we had borrowed from Sandi instead. It worked great and brought us right to where I told it to go… but there was no temple. We got out of the car and walked a block or two east but found nothing. We walked back and then another block or two west and still found nothing. We then entered a hotel lobby and asked them for directions but they told us that there was no temple nearby. Huh? It was hot and I was sweating in a suit, carrying a 3 year old, and lost in a strange city. When we got back into the car I realized what happened. Instead of 1111 West Franklin Street I had mistyped in 111 West Franklin Street. We were in the wrong location but the GPS had taken us to the location I entered. So we drove about a mile and a half and soon arrived at the temple. The ceremony had already started but we hadn’t actually missed too much.
It was a nice ceremony and my cousin Joshua, the one being Bar Mitzvahed, did a great job. It was different from my Bar Mitzvah in many ways. The biggest difference was that he was the only one being Bar Mitzvahed. At my Bar Mitzvah there were three of us at once in a joint ceremony. Another big difference was that many different family members came up on to the bima to take part in the ceremony, including my mom and aunt. I don’t remember any family members coming up on stage and taking part in my ceremony, but that may have been because the temple was still somewhat of a construction site with no stairs leading up to the bima. I had to walk up a makeshift plank to get up there. Mine was the first Bar Mitzvah in the new temple after more than a year of major construction and they weren’t quite done in time.
After the ceremony I finally met up with my sister who had driven in from Washington, D.C. that morning. She of course expected to see me before the ceremony began. Afterward we went back to the hotel and passed the time until the evening reception by talking to relatives in the lobby and swimming in the pool.
The reception was a lot of fun. Darah danced all night long (as you’ll see below). Maegan spent the night with her cousins, especially her cousin Hannah who’s the same age as her. They hadn’t seen each other in more than six years (when they were both only five years old) but they clicked again right away.
Here are some photos we took over the weekend. Most of them came from Amy’s camera because it performed much better in low light and took better quality photos in general.
Oh, perhaps I should comment on that last photo of Maegan and Hannah in jail. The Bar Mitzvah had a Monopoly theme so there was a jail bars setup to take photos. 
Anyway, here’s some video I took with my Flip UltraHD. You’ll notice that just like the photos above, there’s nothing from the actual Bar Mitzvah because you just don’t do that. And sorry about so much of it being Darah dancing.
