(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring Julie Shell, class of 1995, Shari Canter George, class of 1992 and Mike Epstein, class of 1994, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on January 19, 2006)  2/16/06

Oy! The joy of old Bar-mitzvah photos

As a Bexley teenager, Jules Shell had an agreement with her sisters: under no circumstances were boyfriends to be shown the bat-mitzvah albums.

"You would be in huge trouble," said Shell, 28.

But embarrassment over one's 13-year-old self doesn't last forever, as Shell has proved with Bar Mitzvah Disco, a recent book bursting with big hair, flouncy dresses and awkward teens who made the wrong fashion choices for their rite of passage.

Disco is a compilation of photographs and reminiscences of mostly '60s, '70s and '80s ceremonies (bar-mitzvah for boys, bat-mitzvah for girls) that mark a Jewish child's entrance into adulthood, at least symbolically. (Many reminiscences lament the lack of breasts and beards.)

Actually, the ceremonies themselves get less attention than the often-elaborate parties afterward.

"Each one was like a peewee Studio 54, filled with style, music, lust and excess," write Shell and her co-authors, Roger Bennett and Nick Kroll.

The idea for the book was born in New York, where Shell works as a documentary filmmaker and runs an online clothing business with Bennett.

To amuse themselves, Shell, Bennett and Kroll (a writer for Comedy Central) compared bar-mitzvah albums one day and were struck by how well they captured the trials of adolescence and the styles of the late 20th century.

Soon, they had created a Web site (www.barmitzvahdisco.com) and invited others to send photos.

"People sent their stuff in by the thousands," Shell said. "We ended up having to get a warehouse space."

The book, published in late 2004, is about to go into its second printing and is the basis for a stage show to open this month in New York.

Although Disco features bar mitzvahs from throughout the country, Central Ohio residents are well represented. Among them:

Jill Barnett of New Albany, a 31-year-old school teacher and Shell's longtime friend. She awoke one morning to the word that a photo of her dancing with a boy a head shorter at her bat mitzvah party was in the New York Times.
"My instant reaction was that I wanted to enter the witness-relocation program," Barnett joked.

Shell's mother, Joan, of Bexley. She is pictured standing next to a disc jockey who showed up for Jules' party in tight spandex pants.
"She was, I think, really afraid of him," recalled Mrs. Shell, a Bexley Middle School teacher.
 

Mike Epstein, owner of Epstein Memorial Chapel, whose party had a Mexican theme, complete with mariachi band.
"It was pretty unique," said Epstein, 29.

Shari George of Bexley, a 32-year-old lawyer who said she made the book because of a Benetton shirt that was must-have apparel for 13-year-old girls in 1986.

Lorn Spolter, a Blacklick photographer who supplied photos for the book. He has spent 25 years chronicling bar mitzvahs, so nothing in the book surprised him -- not even the Denver safari-themed party in which the honoree rode in on an elephant.

For all of its wry observations and ironic distance, the book has a touching quality because of what it says about the importance of family and tradition. In an essay, David Measer of California remembers what it was like to be the focus of manic event-planning at 13.

"It seemed that the entire community of family, friends and party profiteers were looking at me in a whole different way. They seemed to be treating me -- well, like a man."
 

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