The $5,000 Toffee
Thank God the child did not eat my hearing aid.
How can a 15-cent candy be worth $5,000?
That is what happened after a child misfired one of the sweets at a Bar Mitzvah boy and knocked my hearing aid on the floor, where one of the kiddies grabbed it along with all the candies he could fit in his pockets.
Throwing candies at Jewish celebrations is meant to represent wishes for a sweet life. It is based on the ancient custom of throwing foods, such as raisins and nuts at a bride and groom.
They are considered symbols of plenty and fertility, a reminder to the newlyweds to create lots of children. Fertility is not exactly what parents have in mind when their boy or girl reaches the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah, but, for the kids attending the festivities, throwing candies is fun.
The ritual usually begins after the boy or girl recites a blessing after the reading of the Torah. It is supposed to be a great opportunity for youngsters and adults to shower the boy or girl with sweets.
In practice, the parents abandon their children, defenseless against the rain of hard candies lobbed by strong-armed friends, who act as if they are trying out to be a pitcher for a baseball team. The harder they throw, the more the thrill, and may God have mercy on the target. So much for a sweet life.
The more candy that is thrown, the more the little children can stuff in their mouths and pockets, which is good for dentists. Older people, who aren’t nimble, know that they should stay back several yards from the commotion lest one of the candy terrorist’s sweet missiles misses the target and hits the face of an innocent bystander.
That is how one candy nearly cost me $5,000!
I wear a “bone-anchored hearing aid,” about the size of a toffee candy and attached to a titanium screw that sticks out of my skull over my right ear, as seen here.
Besides my missing one less screw in my head, I am able to hear because the little piece of metal transfers sounds from one side of the head, where the ear does not function, to the other side through vibrations via the skull. When the hearing aid is not attached but turned on and touched, it makes a loud buzzing sound, like a couple thousand bees.
The hearing aid was firmly connected to the screw when I attended the Bar Mitzvah of our neighbor’s son. The Sephardi synagogue was packed with his friends, all of them armed with hard toffees, ready to fire as soon as the Bar Mitzvah boy finished the last blessing, officially acquiring the religious rights and obligations of an adult. There’s no rabbinic opinion that states that it is a mitzvah to bombard the kid with hard candies, but no religious authority is likely to fight the masses.
I moved forward to shake the hand of the target of the candies as well as his father, and then — bull’s-eye! More exactly, bull’s ear. I felt a knock on the hearing device — and suddenly I could not hear.
One of the candies hit the device exactly at the right — or wrong — angle and dislodged it from the screw. A dozen children were scrambling all around me to gobble up the candies, and the women were yodeling their heads off, as is the Sephardi custom.
I called out to the father, “My hearing aid fell! $5000 is on the floor.”
He swept the children away so no one would take a step and crush the device. I looked down, left, right, front and back and found nothing. I knew it had to be making a buzzing sound, but I couldn’t hear anything except children screaming over the candies and women yodeling.
My friend Yishai got down on all fours and looked under the stand where the Torah had been read and found nothing. He looked under the row of seats to my right, where I already had searched, but the hearing aid was nowhere to be heard or seen.
I was beginning to think maybe I was hallucinating and that it fell earlier in the morning. I also was beginning to think how much the Bar Mitzvah was going to cost me when I would have to shell out five grand to be able to hear.
Suddenly, someone said he heard a buzz and discovered from where the sound was coming. Chaim, the five-year-old brother of the Bar Mitzvah celebrant, had picked it up along with the candies he crammed into his pocket.
Thank God, he did not eat it!
I unapologetically took it from his hand, to the delight of everyone around who, unlike me, found the whole scene very amusing.
Last week, the Bar Mitzvah boy turned 20 and was married. I attended the wedding ceremony but had learned my lesson.
I stood in the balcony.
