My Bar Mitzvah

Was I a cute kid or what? 

This is 1956 when I was, of course, thirteen years old.  That would be about the 9th grade.  

My Bar Mitzvah was the affair of the century in my family.  This idea was further fostered by people coming up to me 10 years later at my wedding saying "Your Bar Mitzvah....now there was an affair!!"

I lived in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.  For those of you who may not know, this was (and still is) a really tough neighborhood.  (How tough??  Hey, in BAD neighborhoods the cops go around in pairs - in this neighborhood they held hands!)  I moved away from here about a year later.  We moved to the Linden Houses in the East New York section of Brooklyn, also known as "the projects."  This was a step UP for us!  This was the neighborhood where Murder, Inc. was started.