Mazel Tov: Celebrities' Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories by Jill Rappaport

just from the outsider’s perspective, it was really around the time of our bar mitzvah which marked the turning point for us to start looking at what made us us .

    J OSH: I also think that it’s interesting to see now how Andy and I are both very individual and self-confident and motivated, ambitious people. But at the same time, there is that yin and yang aspect. When I was a kid and I had those summers on ranches or scuba diving or mountain climbing, I would come back and bring those adventures to the household, and Andy and I would live through each other’s adventures vicariously. It’s sort of like we get twice as much done in the same amount of time. There’s an unusual bond. I don’t pretend to be Andy and he doesn’t pretend to be me. But we can share each other’s experiences in a way that people who aren’t twins wouldn’t get.

    A NDY: And I think that the bar mitzvah was one of the last great shared experiences we had as a team. Now we’ll get together for birthdays and do some things together when we’re in the same part of the world. But up until thirteen, we really did everything together. It was the Bernstein twins.
    After our bar mitzvah is when we started thinking, Well, I don’t want to have a Bernstein twins party. I want to have my own friends and my own party. So that was really the last great hurrah of being a child. And after that and then our father’s death the following year, it was really the beginning of another stage in our lives. I think that the significance of the ceremony, of the bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah ceremony as a symbol, is that it makes that transition visual and tangible for kids and their parents. We recognize that something’s changing there, and the ceremony celebrates that.

    J OSH: I think there’s more to it. I’m the one who studied mysticism and understood the magic of the words in the Bible. I think that being asked to partake in this tradition that goes back thousands of years across hundreds of generations, and to be able to read from the same scroll and to wear the traditions of Judaism and step into that role, is more than just a practical reading of texts.
    There is a spiritual change that happens in someone when they become bar mitzvahed. And just because someone may not have that perspective when they’re twelve or thirteen doesn’t mean they should avoid or ignore it or miss out on it. Because when you’re later inducted into that perspective and you realize, “Wow, tradition does mean a lot. I am part of this—it’s critical.”
    That’s why I think Kirk Douglas and people who do or redo this later in life think, Wow! I’m going to do that, That’s why mother said, “I’m going to do that, because I missed out on an aspect of this culture that is transformative, practically as well as spiritually.” There’s meaning there.

Marlee Matlin
    She’s an Oscar-winning actress, a mother of four, and for Marlee Matlin, her bat mitzvah was a turning point in her life. Matlin lost her hearing at the age of eighteen months, but that didn’t stop her from doing what she wanted to do. At the age of seven, she was Dorothy in a Chicago children’s theater group’s production of The Wizard of Oz. She attended Harper College, where she studied criminal justice, and while there rediscovered her passion for acting. After appearing in a local Chicago production of the Tony Award–winning play Children of a Lesser God, she starred in the movie version and won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. This was her first film. With the film Walker, which was shot in Nicaragua, Marlee Matlin began visiting hearing and nonhearing children in communities worldwide.
    Her academic work in criminal justice came in handy for her work in the 1991 television series Reasonable Doubts, in which she played an assistant district attorney. She was an Emmy Award nominee for her work on Picket Fences, Seinfeld, The Practice and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.