act

Think of the silver lining amid the storm of party glitches.

DEBRA B. DARVICK
Special to the Jewish News

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adage, say the old Yiddish
adacr e ' mentsch tracht un Got
lacht (man plans and God
laughs) came about the night Freya
OyLeary's cow kicked over the
lantern setting fire to the barn and all
the bar mitzvah decorations. No mat-
ter how much planning goes into life
cycle celebrations, glitches inevitably
lie in wait.
From double bookings to blizzards,
misassigned Torah portions to chicken
pox, Janice Cherkasky of Gourmet
Parties has seen and dealt with it all.
"When you think about it, barring ill
health, anything can be fixed. What
you have to keep in perspective is that
this is one day. Everything will be
OK," she says.
Howard Rabotnick of West
Bloomfield had a heap of fixing to do
just days before his daughter's bat
mitzvah celebration last June. When
the manager of the skating rink where
Jamie's party was to be held canceled
their contract, Rabotnick and party
planner Andrea Solomon were back to
square one.
Rabotnick, a marketing and pro-
motional manager by profession,
recalls the heart-sinking afternoon:

"We went for one last meeting to
confirm our plans and they told us
that if we wouldn't go along [with
major contractual changes], they
would cancel the contract. There I
was in the lobby of this skating rink
with nine days to go."
In the end, Jamie's 11th hour sug-
gestion of Beverly Hills Club saved
the day. "I was really scared," says
the teen, an eighth-grader at Hillel
Day School of Metropolitan Detroit.
"I had the rehearsals and chanting
my portion to worry about. Dad
called [Beverly Hills Club] and it
worked out."
"They pulled off a miracle,"
recalls Rabotnick of his four-hour
meeting with the club the next day.
"They took someone who was a
nervous wreck and said, 'Don't
worry. It will come off like you
planned it for a year and a half.' All
I had to do was go home and tell
200 people of the change."
Howard and wife Debbie spent
Memorial Day weekend assembling
an eye-catching mailing to tell their
guests of the change in plans.
It was Mother Nature that inter-
vened for the Jaffas. When an ice
storm threatened to put their daugh-
ter's bat mitzvah weekend on ice,
Sandra and Jonathan Jaffa knew they

THE BLACK CLOUD on page 30

The Rabotnick family of West Bloomfield: Jamie 13,
Howard, Debbie, Brandon 4, Brian 10

3/24
2005

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