Sandy Peisner
Guest Writer
What is this? What are we doing? What in God’s name are we doing? What kind of lives are these? We’re like children. We’re not ‘men.’
– Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld
In Judaism, you become a man at 13. Bar Mitzvah. They say that’s when it happens. But at 13, I didn’t feel like a man. I was just a kid in a suit, reading Hebrew from a scroll I barely understood, trying not to mess up the Haftarah.
Manhood? That felt like a myth.
I’m reminded of that Seinfeld episode where George and Jerry are sitting around, admitting they’re not really “men.” Not like the other guys – the real men. And I get it.
Maybe I was, unknowingly, a young man at 18 – spending a year on a kibbutz, trekking around Europe, trying to figure out who I was with nothing but a backpack and a Eurail pass.
Was I a man when I moved to Atlanta for school? When I took my first sales job? Maybe it happened earlier – when I lost my virginity. Or later, when I moved across the country for work – first to San Francisco, then Toronto.
Was it when I got married? Or when I became a father?
Honestly, I’m not sure if there was ever one clear moment when I officially became “Mr. Peisner.” No sudden transformation. No dramatic shift. It wasn’t a lightning strike.
If I became a man at all, it wasn’t in a single moment. It was a thousand small ones, adding up over time. It was more like erosion. A slow, quiet process.
