Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mako_side_b/2332323845/sizes/o/

I have been wondering how to buy a batmitzvah present for a girl who already has everything, and I mean everything. She is the daughter of a good friend. She is also friendly with my own daughter, who is now completing her military service in the IDF. Her modern-orthodox family lives in London but her parents do whatever they can to strengthen their connections to Israel, including having bought a vacation apartment, planning to build a more permanent home here, bringing their daughter and some of her friends for an ‘Israel Experience’ tour, and by responding generously to many deserving causes.

The girl herself loves books, is a creative writer, computer competent and also a budding circus artiste. People have offered me all kinds of helpful suggestions, ranging from the symbolic to the extravagant, but no single item seemed to hit the spot. So I decided to approach the problem methodically, and analyze what I was trying to achieve.

I listed what seemed to be the criteria:

• something the girl will appreciate and get pleasure from immediately, or alternatively, something she will get pleasure from when she is a little older;
• something that will last (not a consumable item);
• something she will remember that she received from my family;
• something Israeli;
• something thoughtful and imaginative;
• something she would never buy for herself;
• something that she is unlikely to already have;
• something she is unlikely to receive from anybody else;
• something that will reflect the value that I place on our friendship with her parents.

I then listed the factors that might influence me but which I know I should try to ignore:

• something my own daughter would like (not necessarily relevant);
• something I like (definitely not relevant);
• something an Israeli girl would like (not necessarily the same);
• something better, or bigger, or more expensive than anything else she is likely to receive (impossible).

Umm… This seemed to rule out a 4-carat D-flawless diamond pendant, or even a slightly more modest Israel Medals’ batmitzvah medallion. A date with Yehuda Levi, a Porsche 911 to be delivered on her 17^th birthday, or a lifetime membership of The Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews are also non-starters. Her ‘first’ set of silver Shabbat candlesticks would likely join several such sets that will remain boxed and unused for years. There’s no way I would give her a check (crass, boring, and instantly forgettable unless it included an outrageous number of figures), a book or gift token (the easy way out), a laptop computer, an IPhone, or just about anything that anyone can pick up in any shop in London. Her particular interests also didn’t help me much; a flying trapeze and/or a clown suit?

Clearly I would have to go for the symbolic, which means something Judaic and/or Israeli, but I really wanted it to be something personal too. The answer seemed to be what Hebrew-speakers call a “combina”, that is to say a gift that included a little of everything I am looking for.

My daughter is going to obtain from her army unit an IDF beret and cap-badge. We will buy an orange tree, hang a name-plate on it marking the occasion, and replant it in due course in the garden of her parents’ future home here. We will try to find a piece of Israeli-made jewelry, not madly expensive but interesting and wearable. And we will organize a little surprise for her in the course of her ‘See Israel’ tour.

My thanks to those whose ideas I have adopted. I’m not sure that I have got it exactly right, but at least I tried.