The town I grew up in was at least fifty percent Jewish, so every weekend in the 7th grade, we went to Bar and Bat Mitzvahs.
This is hands down the biggest, most exciting thing I've ever been involved with in my life. I can only compare it to my Bar Mitzvah.
I struggled with being a Latino growing up in Los Angeles. I felt very American. I still do. I went to 35 bar mitzvahs before I went to a single quinceanera. I could talk all day about my culture and what it means to me.
I played in front of every conceivable audience you could face: an all-black audience, all-white, firemen's fairs, policemen's balls, in front of supermarkets, bar mitzvahs, weddings, drive-in theaters. I'd seen it all before I ever walked into a recording studio.
When I wasn't working on Broadway, I worked in a Bat Mitzvah dress shop and was the Cinderella of the shop - always cleaning and vacuuming!
I met Evan Goldberg at bar-mitzvah class. It was called tallis and tefillin.
I don't remember much about my bar mitzvah. The only thing I remember - I killed! That's what I remembered. Nobody could follow me at my bar-mitzvah. It was over when I was done.
In high school, I taught dance classes for 3-year-olds up to 16-year-olds, so between that and some bat mitzvah money, I saved up a pretty good nest egg to move to L. A.
Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.
When I sing along with Britney Spears I will sing in an American accent. But eventually I found my own voice. My songs are so brutally honest, it would be alien to sing in any accent other than my own. Don't get me wrong - I can imitate singers. I can do bar mitzvahs and weddings.
I just went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah. No crazy weird Jewish cult.
I suppose the nearest equivalent to a bar mitzvah in terms of emotional build-up would probably not even be one's wedding day, but one's coronation.
I feel like when I was 13 and I had to go to bar mitzvahs every weekend. This is the same feeling. You have to put on a suit every weekend to go meet with a bunch of Jews.
I used to limp around my neighborhood imitating him. I did my Bar Mitzvah with an Oklahoma drawl.
For a degenerate like me, Vegas is like a walk down memory lane. Last time I went to Vegas, I went to my old coke dealer's kid's bar mitzvah.
Ironically, my rabbi was a bar mitzvah Nazi. So I got bar mitzvahed. And though I didn't want to, the theme of my bar mitzvah party was Madonna.
There were lots of little boys having their bar mitzvahs all over the world, and they sent me tapes of some of them that they interviewed, probably six or seven little boys, and there was something about Mendel. I just loved his little face. I loved the energy of Mendel.
I would love to host someone's bar mitzvah. I would love to do that.
When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul.
I was Jewish, through and through, although in our house that didn't mean a whole lot. We never went to synagogue. I never had a Bar Mitzvah. We didn't keep kosher or observe the Sabbath. In fact, I'm not so sure I would have known what the Sabbath looked like if it passed me on the street, so how could I observe it?
