Copyright 1998 Sarah Siegel

The year of my Woody Woodpecker and Popeye fetishes, my sister Deb had her bat mitzvah at Temple Sinai....I have only two memories of Deb’s bat mitzvah: the pastel-colored mints on which my father calligraphically decorated Deb’s name in Hebrew and English, alternating mint-by-mint, and being outside in the car with my nana. It was dark out and she taught me "Star Light, Star Bright." I don’t recall what we wished for. I always think of my nana when I recite that star-light chant.

A year later, I was consecrated at Temple Sinai and still have the miniature, illustrated Torah the Rabbi handed to each of us. I won the Purim dress-up contest that year, too, as a Yemenite Queen Esther. My most exciting experience at Temple Sinai was winning a gigantic jar of jelly beans, as I guessed closest to the correct number during some raffle. There were 256 in the jar....

Read the next excerpt, " Praying in Jerusalem -- an accidental masquerade at eight" or return to the home page of Sarah Siegel's Coming-of-age Memoir.

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