You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Gets Growing Up Jewish Right

October 2024 · 6 minute read

The Big Picture

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah, which premiered this past month on Netflix and stars Adam Sandler along with his two daughters Sunny Sandler and Sadie Sandler, is probably the best (and funniest!) representation of modern Jewish culture we've seen in recent movie history. Based on Fiona Rosenbloom's novel of the same name, the movie centers on 13-year-old Stacey Friedman (Sunny Sandler) in the tumultuous and drama-filled months before her very big day: her Bat Mitzvah. A Bar, Bat, or Bnei Mitzvah (his, hers, or theirs) is a Jewish coming-of-age ceremony, where young adults read the Torah for the first time and, at least in modern culture, celebrate that accomplishment with a very big party. It's Judaism's sweet sixteen or quinceañara, just held a few years earlier – so we're all a little more awkward and a lot more dramatic.

Combining such a meaningful tradition with the mean-girl culture of seventh grade is, honestly, a recipe for disaster, but it's one every Jewish 13-year-old has experienced. For these tweens, Bar/Bat/Bnei Mitzvah season is an era, one that, fifteen years later, we may have thought we'd forgotten. You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah is like a startling flashback, in the very best way. The characters are gold, the conflicts are spot on, and all the jokes land. In a time when everyone is starving for accurate, respectful representation, this movie hits it out of the park.

'You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah' Wins With Its Characters

As a Jewish adult, watching You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah felt at times like deja vu. So many of the characters were typecasts of ones we knew growing up — but in a hilarious way, not an offensive one. Sarah Sherman’s trying-to-be-hip Rabbi Rebecca is every relatively young rabbi we have ever met, working desperately to be seen as relatable by a gaggle of young teens. There’s a cantor carrying around a guitar (Dan Bulla) that sends this writer right back to her Jewish Day School days (Hi Rabbi Yoshi!). Adam Sandler, the real-life Jewish dad to Sunny and Sadie, is a typical Jewish father trying to teach his materialistic teen the principles of Judaism while juggling their ridiculous party-planning requests. Even DJ Shmuely (Ido Mosseri), the over-the-top Bat Mitzvah emcee, is the perfect reflection of what seventh graders are normally looking for. He also shows the group mentality of Bnei Mitzvah season – once someone becomes the go-to vendor in the Jewish community, they're absolutely set.

The movie gets the kids themselves right too – Dylan Hoffman's Andy is the hottest guy in Saturday School, and Stacey and her best friend Lydia (Samantha Lorraine) are the two inseparable besties who absolutely love to match. All the greatest middle-school tropes are present and accounted for. Yes, these teen dynamics may be accurate regardless of religion, but there is something truly comforting about the inherent Jewishness of everyone involved. Andy is a Goldfarb, and Lydia is a Rodriguez-Katz. Even queen bee Kym Chang Cohen (Miya Cech) has a recognizably Jewish last name. (On another note, the diversity present in such a Jewish setting feels hugely important – the implication that Judaism is its own ethnicity (read: European) negates the experience of many multicultural Jews, and this kind of representation is deeply necessary.) It's comforting – and relatable, to those of us who grew up in Jewish communities – for everyone's Jewishness to be highlighted, but not othered. The details chosen feel incredibly specific: the Bat Mitzvah video that friends and family spend weeks working on (mine kicked off with the Black Eyed Peas' "Let's Get It Started"), the hunt for the perfect party theme, fighting with your mother over how appropriate your dress needs to be for synagogue. A dad yelling something about fighting the Nazis (this one doesn't personally hit home, but it was still fantastic). The Judaism shown in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah was clearly written by Jewish people, and the results speak for themselves.

Stacey's Journey Is Relatable to Jewish Teens Everywhere

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah builds a beautiful, albeit very privileged, view of modern Judaism, but it shines brightest in its exploration of Sunny's transformation over the movie's 103 minutes. Sunny's dilemmas – caring deeply about knowing her Torah portion but just as deeply about having a mojito bar at her Bat Mitzvah party – ring so true to what we all felt during that time in our lives. The questions of impending adulthood, and the pressure to figure out who we want to be at the ripe age of 13, are both hugely important and completely dissonant to the priorities of the average seventh grader. It's beautiful that we, as a culture, have conversations about our place in the world and how we make it better, kinder, and more full of mitzvahs (good deeds). But nothing trumps when the cool girls like your party, getting to buy your first pair of high heels, or having the cutest guy in the grade ask you how you're doing (because he accidentally kicked a ball in your face). Picking your Mitzvah Project based on the after-school activities of said guy is absolutely missing the point, and thus, absolutely spot on.

To put it simply, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah is good. It's filled with heart and incredibly funny, a movie geared towards teens that is also a joy to watch as an adult. But it's extra special to watch as a Jewish one, to see such a formative time of our lives represented on a platform as big as Netflix's, with a star as big as Sandler (the older one – though if their performances are any indication, Sunny and Sadie have quite the future ahead of them). You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah does such a great job representing the Jewish experience honestly, lightheartedly, and hilariously. To see a story play out on screen that you relate to, in whatever way, is so impactful – to be incredibly cheesy, it's what filmmaking is all about. This film is to Bnei Mitzvahs what America Ferrera's speech in Barbie was to women everywhere. For that, they deserve a round of applause.

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