I’m pretty sure that by the time my wife and I finish making our daughter, Adina, her upcoming bat mitzvah party, everyone in the family is going to be upset at us. It’s great when you’re having a simcha. You’re supposed to be happy, and your prime concern is, “How do we celebrate this in a way that the fewest people will be upset?”

The plan is to have a low-key party. Extremely low key, because Adina’s school has a policy that you can’t invite friends. Just your parents’ friends. Or relatives. So we’re going with relatives. We have a pretty big family, and by the time we’re done inviting relatives, we have no room for friends anyway.

Nevertheless, we felt that we had to base the party around something. There has to be that part of the party that people aim to get there for. For example, every wedding has a chuppah, and people try to be there for that. An upsherin has the haircut, as in, “Hurry up; we’re going to miss the part where everyone cuts his hair! Okay, now you’re just running with scissors.”

But what’s our draw here? Her speech? “Come on time; there’s going to be a speech!” “Hey, where’re you going? There’s going to be a speech!”

We needed something. What do girls do when they become bat mitzvah? Bake challah, right? But it’s not like she’s going to make challah while everyone watches, and then they get to sit around waiting for it to rise so they could all wash.

So we wanted to have some kind of activity. And it turns out that Adina loves craft projects, and my wife has a friend who just opened a place in town that lets people paint glass. So we figured, “Why not? It sure beats people sitting around chewing.”

On the other hand, the glass-painting place is kind of small. And sure, we could pack people in, but that might not be the best idea, because there’s literally glass all over that place.

Then my wife played with the numbers, and she discovered that if we didn’t invite men altogether, we could cut our guest list in half. I wasn’t offended. Plus I discovered that if we do this, I don’t have to speak. I just have to write my daughter’s speech. Which she’s upset about, by the way.

But now all the men are offended that they weren’t invited. My sons are upset that they don’t get to take off school, and now they’re saying that when they have their bar mitzvahs, they want it to be men only. And my wife is saying that’s fine with her.

Meanwhile, my father’s offended that he can’t come, especially since this is his own granddaughter, and meanwhile my father-in-law’s cousins are coming, one of whom thinks my daughter’s name is Dina. And my father-in-law’s upset that he’s driving four hours each way and staying for Shabbos just to bring my mother-in-law to a simcha he won’t get to go to. And I’m upset that they’re coming down for Shabbos.

Meanwhile, even without men, we’re short on space. We sent out invitations, and everyone was like, “We have to say yes, or they’ll be offended that we’re not coming!” Never mind that we’re actually hoping that someone isn’t coming. There’s no specific person that we don’t want there, but the number is too big.

So there’s even less space than we thought. We were going to serve the food buffet style, but if we have to use every table for guests, where do we put the food? And how do we arrange things with enough room that people could actually get to it while other people are eating soup?

So her idea is to limit the menu. If there’s not much variety, she says, it takes up less space. Meanwhile, I’m afraid that people will get there and go, “We travelled four hours for this?” When it comes to food at a simcha, I’m a firm believer that more is more. Because it is more. Mathematically.

So I came up with an idea: I’m going to cater. I’m going to be in the back, putting food on plates, and no one has to get up. I also figure that if I cater, I can sneak in extra foods, and maybe my wife won’t notice. Until she does.

We also have to figure out the schedule. As it is, we’re convinced that some people are going to show up dressed for a seudah, and we’re going to make them paint with little to no elbow space. In fact, there were some people who RSVP’d in the first place by saying, “I’ll come, but I don’t have to paint. Just let the kids paint.” And my wife said, “There are going to be like six kids at this thing. Adults are painting.”

So now they all think my daughter doesn’t have friends.

At least that means they’ll sign the poster. We’re going to have one of those big posters that says Adina’s name in big lettering, which I now think will totally embarrass the relative who keeps getting her name wrong. Should we write it wrong on the poster?

How to upset everyone you know in one fell swoop: Just invite them all to the same location.

Or maybe all this stress is for nothing. It’s a simcha. Maybe people will just be happy for us. For what? I don’t remember anymore. Something to do with Adina, I think. I only know this because there’s a poster.

By Mordechai Schmutter

 Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia, The Jewish Press and Aish.com, among others. He also has five books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].