The bid is $36 … do I hear $37? There’s $72 from the Gold- blums in Cave Creek … and yes, $180 from the Stein family … do I hear more? Ladies and gentlemen, I have $360 from the Izenstarks in Peoria … going once, going twice, sold for $360! That’s a lot of cash for a 13-year-old kid.
Ah the eternal question: how much money do you give a bar mitzvah? A sum of $18 is always a nice gesture, as long as it isn’t a family member or really close friend’s child; $36 might be a bit more palatable for a distant cousin (out of town), if you’re not attending the affair. You can give a Barnes and Noble gift card, plant a tree or even splurge for a U.S. or Israeli savings bond – that is, if you’re optimistic that both countries will still be around in 2024 when the bond matures. It’s not an easy question to answer, and there clearly is no absolute right or wrong.
If you ask nearly anyone of a certain age group in my family, they’ll say, “Well, what did the so and so’s give you?” I’ve always felt that was a weird scale by which to determine a gift amount. In my opinion, it’s all about how close you are to the bar mitzvah’s family and your personal financial situation at any given time. There’s also a geographic factor at play. While we here in Arizona tend to be a bit more reasonable with our bar mitzvah celebrations, the further East you go, the bigger the bashes be- come and the more that’s expected in gift money.
Having a personal gift-giving compass is key to determining what and how much to give. The first thing to remember is that a bar mitzvah isn’t a wedding. It’s a celebration of a child’s first steps into adulthood, and the idea here is to participate in and recognize a meaningful ritual. The idea of giving some multiple of chai or “life,” the numeric value of which is 18, seems to be a common practice. Based on your personal economics, you can give anywhere from $18, to $36, to $72 to $360 if you’re really rolling in dough.
In researching this topic, I found one website that offered a definitive bar mitzvah gift-giving formula. Whatever you would spend on a birthday present times 1.5 is how you determine an appropriate bar mitzvah gift. So if you normally spend $25 on your child’s peer for a regular birthday, you’d spend $37.50 on
a bar mitzvah gift. But, if you wanted to keep the whole chai thing intact, you could give $36 and call it a day. However, as a former “Price is Right” devotee, I would tend to round up to the next-highest chai amount of $54 just to make sure I wasn’t out- bid by the rest of my peer group.
I have a good friend who vehemently abides by the East Coast rule that you determine the gift amount by the cost of the dinner times the number of family members attending. For example, if a family of four is invited to a bar mitzvah celebration at the local wood-fired pizza joint, you’d figure the cost of a pizza and a beer comes to about $20 each, so you’d multiply that by four and write a check for $80. This formula adds up pretty quickly though when you get into the whole fancy hotel dinner and dancing soiree. Here you might be talking $100 a plate and $50 a plate per kid. That same family of four would be responsi- ble for a whopping gift of $300 in this scenario. My objection to this is that it seems to penalize the attending families who really have no say in the type of event chosen or the cost of said event. But, if you want to avoid petty whispering behind your back as you gorge yourself on the sweet table, this might be a safe way to estimate your monetary giving.
As for actual gifts, that seems to be kind of no-no unless you’re a very close family member. Leave the Jewish symbolic gifts to the family and the synagogue. Chances are good the child will get a Kiddush cup and/or Shabbat candlesticks from the synagogue, and no matter how beautiful the ones you might give would be, they’re probably not going to be fully appreciated until well after your death when they’re finally unpacked and set out for the now adult’s first family Shabbat with spouse and baby. Not a lot of immediate gratification here.
If your child is invited alone as a peer to a bar mitzvah party, then most of the above rules become null and void. Wii games, Beats headphones, even a low-end iPod might be well received for a kids-only event.
My overall advice on this issue is to give what you feel in your heart you can give. Personally, I’d avoid going the Mont Blanc pen route because most kids won’t appreciate it, and it’ll just end up in the back of a drawer until the ink dries up and the kid tosses it thinking it’s just an old pen that doesn’t write. I like giving bonds because they’re forced savings in case the child and/or parents are careless acquisitors. But, in a pinch, I go for the check.
I like the idea of chai, so I’d stick with a multiple of 18. Just feels like good juju … er, um … jewjew.
