The big feast was amazing, with abundant food being spread out on a long table, and my name at the front spelled out of bagels. My entire family was there, and the food from Goldberg’s tasted better than the thousands of times I have eaten it before, since it was for such a proud accomplishment of mine. We were all celebrating for the same reason. Tomorrow was the day of my Bar Mitzvah, which is the day I have been preparing myself for over a year. When the dinner ended, I went back home and spent the rest of my evening studying and reciting the prayers and my Torah piece. I spent the whole night worrying that I wasn’t ready, but in my mind I knew I was. I have received tutoring for over a year by this point so I was well prepared.
The next morning, I woke up early to the sound of my dad barging into my room and turning on the annoyingly bright light. I went downstairs, showered, brushed my teeth, and got dressed in my suit for the service, which felt very tight and constricted my shoulder movement. When I finished, I had to wait for my dad to help me with my tie that was decorated with a lattice pattern. It felt like an hour waiting for him to say it was perfect. Once he was finally done, and he, my mom, and my brother were adequately dressed, we got in the car and started driving to Temple Sinai.
Once we were at the synagogue, we met up with my grandparents, uncles and aunts, and all five of my cousins. We took what felt like hundreds of photos, and by the end of it, it felt like someone was trying to pull on both sides of my mouth as hard as they could. The rabbi led me up to the pedestal in front of the many rows of seats and benches, with the Ark standing proudly behind it, covered in the religious designs and pictures and shielding the Torahs. Soon friends of my family and I started to show up and congregate in the atrium outside the immense, wooden doors standing between me and them. Once everyone arrived and started to sit down, I finished chatting with people and walked back up to the pedestal. I saw almost everyone I knew sitting down and soon the service started. I don’t remember much of what happened during the service because it went by in a fast blur. I only remember what the prayers I said were, my Torah portion, and walking past everyone while holding the Torah. Soon it ended, and we all went into a separate room to party and celebrate, which ended one of the greatest days of my life. After the party, I reflected on what had happened over the course of the day. This made me realized that I was an adult now, and that I could move on from this tiresome event knowing it was over.
This short paper is one I wrote back in the first semester of eighth grade. It is about my Bar Mitzvah, which at that point in time happened less than a year before, but it was still fresh in my mind. It was the first big "essay" that we had to write in English that year, and reading back over it, I realize how much I have grown as a writer, especially since I have recently written about the exact same event. It also made me reminisce over these past couple years, and how I have grown as a person since eight grade, but it also made me sad, knowing that all those years are in the past, and the future is rapidly approaching me as I prepare for college. Nothing will ever be as easy as it was writing this paper, and I am going to miss that a lot, but I am glad at the growth that I have seen myself achieve since then.