One of our most popular stories from 2009 was Bari’s Bat Mitzvah Blizzard.
It was a great lesson about celebrating what’s truly important – being together.
Once again, severe weather was to hit the tri-state area. This time the forecast was for snow, over a weekend in October, when the weather is not usually an issue.
The Zinn family from Montclair, New Jersey was excited to celebrate their son Jonah’s Bar Mitzvah on October 29, 2011 with a morning service followed by a daytime celebration at the Glen Ridge Country Club.
Snow had started to fall by 11am, but the service and party went on as scheduled.
Here’s what happened next as told to us by Mitzvah Mom Nancy Friedman Zinn:
We were lucky that our synagogue for the service and the Country Club where we were holding our party were very close to each other.
Our guests made it safely to the Country Club and our cocktail hour went on as planned.
The blackout occurred during our candle lighting ceremony. The funny thing is that I didn’t even realize we had lost power at first because the room has such big windows.
For our son’s candle lighting, we assigned friends and families a word (for example: kindness, community, creativity, individuality, family) and asked them to come up to light a candle and say a few words based on their assigned word about Jonah.
My husband and I had spent my hours struggling to find the perfect song for each guest who would be lighting a candle.
Once the power went out, so did the DJ’s ability to play these songs. So my husband and I started singing them ourselves, and an impromptu sing-a-long ensued. It was great!
The Zinn family
We got through the candle lighting and it was time for the Horah. Again our guests played along and sang Hava Nagila and other Jewish songs. We were all lifted in the chairs as usual. The dancing continued due to our fantastic guests singing the Hustle, Macarena and other popular songs.
The power must have been out for about 1½ hours before the Club was able to get a generator. Although the power at the Country Club did not go back on, we did have music and they were able to serve food.
The party was fantastic both in spite of and because of the storm!
We thank Nancy for sharing her son’s Bar Mitzvah Blackout story with our readers. If you have a story from this past snow storm, let us know at [email protected].
