<p>Wow, the responses in this thread really highlight the variety of Jewish experience in America for me.</p>
<p>– I have been Jewish all my life, and been through years of non-stop bar mitzvahs (once when I, my friends, and my cousins all turned 13, then when my kids and all their friends and relatives did). I have never heard of the 18-chai thing. No kidding. In retrospect, my kids may each have gotten a couple checks or gift cards for $18 or $36, but I never thought to ask why that number.</p>
<p>– I don’t think non-Jews should feel compelled to give Jewish-themed gifts.</p>
<p>– Here are the two most memorable gifts my son got: (1) An older friend of his got him an action figure from a Japanese manga he knew my son liked. (2) One of the girls in his class spent about $10 to buy him some knick-knacks in a store in Chinatown (two little figurines, a button, a swatch of cloth), and they were EXACTLY what he would have picked out if he had been in the store with her. We were stunned at how well she knew him; so were her parents (everyone thought she was too self-involved to notice other people much). The point being, if your child knows the girl well, let her pick something out.</p>
<p>– Cash/checks are common, but many people do not like that, and it’s perfectly appropriate to give gift cards (Borders made out like a bandit on my kids’ bar mitzvahs) or to give gifts to charity in the child’s honor (and often there will be a charity designated by the child and her family.</p>
<p>– In Jewish tradition, men and women alike are supposed to cover their heads. In the most observant traditions, that is all the time, not just in synagogue. Many orthodox women comply with that by shaving their heads and wearing a wig, so that you might not notice it. In non-orthodox communities, usually men wear kippahs and women some sort of scarf or snood in the synagogue, although it is getting pretty common for women to wear kippahs too. The further away from orthodoxy you get, the less likely it is that all men and women will be covering their heads, and it is unlikely in any but an orthodox context that anyone would ask a bar mitzvah guest whose head is uncovered to cover it. But all synagogues keep a supply of kippahs for this purpose, so you can rely on having them there in case you feel that you ought to have your heads covered.</p>
<p>– The custom of girls having a bat mitzvah is no more than a generation old (neither of my sisters, now in their 40s, and almost none of my female friends had one, and ours was a relatively liberal family), so it has no actual significance in traditional Jewish law. The ceremony itself has no ritual significance for boys, either. What it represents is the boy (or girl) doing things for the first time in public that he (or she) can only do as a legal adult under Jewish law, and constitutes sort of a public announcement of their legal majority. Of course, the custom as practiced here takes on all sorts of other functions, since no one takes seriously the adulthood of 12-year-old girls or 13-year-old boys, but everyone respects that it takes kids a lot of work to be able to carry off a bar mitzvah ceremony, and that work has character-building value. Also, as noted, many congregations try to give it some function.</p>
<p>– Feel free to come late to the service. Many, many other people will. You don’t have to come late – personally, I don’t like to – but in most synagogues the number of people present when the service begins will be about 15-25% of the number of people there when it ends. An hour late is common, sometimes more. You can ask around for local custom.</p>
The evening event is probably going to be a big shindig and you MUST let the hostess know if you will or will not attend; AND if something comes up and you must cancel, CALL!!! Evening parties tend to be paid per person and can be very costly. </p>