Los Angeles does not do anything small. Not premieres, not weddings, and definitely not bar mitzvahs.
I have spent 27 years photographing this city’s biggest nights. Galas, red carpets, product launches, afterparties. And I will tell you something people outside LA do not believe until they see it: some of the most lavish parties in this town are thrown for thirteen-year-olds.
The bar mitzvah industrial complex of Los Angeles is its own economy. Venue takeovers, lighting designers, celebrity performers, custom everything. A Saturday night in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air can look less like a religious milestone and more like the Grammys afterparty, except the guest of honor cannot legally drive home.
When the party costs more than the house
The stories are legend because they are true.
A few years back, the Jewish Journal ran a first-person account of a bar mitzvah at the Beverly Hills Hotel rumored to cost $2 million. The family hired 18 counselors just to supervise 35 kids. DJ Khaled showed up and settled into a cabana by the pool. The Clippers Spirit dance team performed. Valet parking was courtesy of the family. The writer’s only job was to make sure the kids were, in the planner’s words, “OK, ALIVE, and HAVING FUN.”
Then there is the Jeff Zucker affair. The former NBC chief threw his son’s bar mitzvah at the Four Seasons, where Drake performed, Katie Couric ate rack of lamb, and iPad stations dotted the room so the thirteen-year-olds could update their Facebook statuses between courses. The New York Post estimated the damage at $250,000. Zucker had reportedly turned down Kanye West’s $1 million asking price for the gig. Drake, the reports noted, offered a discount.
And those are just the ones that made the papers. Businessman Nelson Peltz reportedly spent $2 million on a bar mitzvah for his twin sons at the Pierre in New York, complete with stilt walkers, two bands, five singers, a hockey rink, and a basketball hoop. In 2008, a bat mitzvah at Cipriani featured the birthday girl descending from the ceiling by rope in a Catwoman suit while Jon Bon Jovi played a 45-minute set. The reported price tag: $1 million.
Why LA does it bigger
Every city has its status rituals. In Los Angeles, the currency is the event itself.
This is a town where half the parents work in entertainment and the other half work for people who do. The party planner who does your awards-season gala also does your kid’s mitzvah. The lighting designer from the concert tour designs the ballroom. The DJ who played the club last Friday plays the dance floor this Saturday. The infrastructure of spectacle is just sitting here, waiting to be booked.
So the escalation is almost mechanical. One family books a live band. The next books a band and a lounge singer. The next books a headliner. Nobody sat down and decided a thirteen-year-old needs a superstar DJ. It just happened, one upgrade at a time, until here we are.
I have watched this from behind the camera for decades, and the pattern is always the same. The parents swear they are keeping it intimate. Then the guest list hits 200. Then there is a theme. Then there is a production meeting.
The pushback from the pulpit
Not everyone is thrilled. Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, one of the most prominent rabbis in the country, has spent years trying to talk families down.
“I tell them they are giving the wrong message to the child, never mind to the community,” Wolpe told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency after attending one outlandish affair too many. “Sometimes they are under the impression that the religious value is commensurate with the value of the event. That is not true.”
He has a point, and most parents know it. The morning service is the actual bar mitzvah. A boy reads from the Torah. That part costs nothing and means everything. Everything after sundown is theater. Beautiful, expensive, unforgettable theater, but theater.
The tension is the whole story. Nobody wants to be the family that threw the vulgar party. Everybody wants to be the family that threw the incredible party. The line between those two things is about $500,000 and entirely in the eye of the beholder.
What the photos never show
Here is what I have learned watching these parties through a lens for 27 years. The photos from the $2 million party and the $20,000 party look remarkably similar once you strip out the headliner.
The shot that matters is never the wide angle of the ballroom. It is the kid’s face during the candle lighting. It is the grandparents dancing. It is the thirteen-year-old laughing with his friends at midnight, tie loosened, completely unaware that this night cost more than most weddings.
I have shot galas where the talent cost seven figures and the best frame of the night was a candid in a hallway. Scale photographs well, but it does not feel like anything. The small moments are what survive.
That is the open secret of LA’s million-dollar mitzvahs. The parents are buying the spectacle, but the kid will remember the dance floor. And in thirty years, when he shows his own children the album, he will not point at the ice sculpture. He will point at his friends.
Planning a bar mitzvah in Los Angeles? Read the practical side: Bar Mitzvah Photographer Los Angeles: How to Hire One for the Big Day
Related reading:
- LA’s Gala Season, Shot From the Inside: 27 Years of Black-Tie Nights in Los Angeles
- Behind the Lens of LA’s Luxury Listings: What 27 Years Photographing Million-Dollar Homes Taught Me About How This City Lives
- The Glamour Is the Smallest Part: What 27 Years Shooting Fashion in Los Angeles Taught Me
Sources:
- Jewish Journal first-person account of the $2M Beverly Hills Hotel bar mitzvah: jewishjournal.com
- St. Louis Jewish Light on over-the-top mitzvah celebrations and Rabbi Wolpe: stljewishlight.org
