“So maybe having a bat mitzvah wasn’t my idea originally, and maybe I hadn’t completely made up my own mind about it, but who was that know-it-all Sheila Rosenberg, with her big hair and rubbery lips and runny mascara to wrinkle her nose at my ‘om’ necklace and say whether I’m Jewish enough to have one or not? I stared at the back of her smug, composed, curly-haired head and made up my mind: I am having a bat mitzvah, Sheila, I thought at her, and you’re not invited.”

—from My Basmati Bat Mitzvah