Money Doesn’t Matter

by David Gabbay

“This is the story of how I learned that there is nothing more important than the content of somebody's character.”

I'm David Gabbay-Killen, and this is the story of how I learned that there is nothing more important than the content of somebody's character. It's a lazy Sunday afternoon in February, 2019, and David, a twelve-year-old boy, is searching through a flood of papers that rummaged his desk, which he is typically a neat freak about. While he sits down on a chair, facing the desk, he organizes the contents of the table into a batch of envelopes, bar mitzvah invite cards, and printed clear labels for the addresses of family and friends. David gets into the rhythm, once he is accustomed to carefully affixing each and every label onto envelopes, and ever so gently sliding cards inside. The boy peeked at some of the countries on the labels; Canada, Israel, France, South Africa, and of course his immediate family of seven, over in Massachusetts. As David was in the rhythm, he paused and stared blankly as he transitioned onto the label.

He paused when he saw and recognized the name. The boy began dreaming. Aren't so-and-so the super-rich and cool people over in Timbuktu? David began fantasizing about the crazy gifts that the super-rich would give, especially for a once-of-a-lifetime occasion such as a young boy's bar mitzvah. "Could it be a drone?" he thought. A card just seems too boring for these extravagant people. Regardless, he put an immense effort into placing the address label right in the center, pressed the stamp ever so flawlessly over the top right of the envelope. David brought an invitation card, thought figuratively, "Wow, so-and-so will open, feel, see, and even read from this exact card." He continued as he placed the very important envelope over a pile of the other finished products. David forgot about the special card as he continued working. The next day, he took all of the envelopes to the post office, and out and about they went.

Now, it's a chilly evening in Boston, Massachusetts, in December 2016. And David had a lot of time to reflect as his mother was sitting shiva in the house of his uncle, the fatherly figure and role model of his life. The boy reflected on each and every instance that he interacted with his uncle. While doing so, he remembered that the very last time that he saw him alive was… at his very own bar mitzvah. He was only one of five guests who were in attendance, so it wasn't that difficult to remember. David recalled that he must've sent him an invitation card. He sat in the living room chair, alone, in silence. The boy stared, blankly at a window with snow piling over the sidewalk outside. For some reason, the only card that he intimately recalled assembling was to so-and-sos to Timbuktu. The reason why flooded through his brain shortly thereafter. "Wow," he thought, "I didn't get no email, card… hell, even Facebook message congratulating me from so-and-so. These are the people in my family that I once envied?" Shame and disgust filled through the boy's body, and the bitter taste of this experience is still present.