I just went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah. No crazy weird Jewish cult.
When I celebrated my bar mitzvah, there was no cake. Today, there is no such thing as a bar mitzvah in the United States without a special cake. It can be even more complicated and expensive than a wedding cake, because bar-mitzvah cakes are often based on a particular theme.
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.
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.
I fought tooth and nail: I didn't want to learn Hebrew. My Bar Mitzvah came around, and I didn't want to read the Torah portion. I look back with a lot of chagrin about how I behaved.
There was a year straight where every weekend, I went to at least one bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, and we would all go, and it was a lot of fun. We sneak some beer; we'd hang out; we would try to get with girls and not. And usually we'd just end up hanging out together alone.
That room was not available, and the only other room had been booked for a Jewish bar mitzvah. I called the father and told him I needed the room and I would pay him to move the bar mitzvah to an adjoining room which was smaller.
[I had Bar mitzvah ]it was just me and my mom. And she's celebrating. And she's reading things to me in Hebrew. I don't know what's going on. And she's telling me that now I'm a man. And I'm like, does that mean I have no chores? And she's like, no, you still have chores, but you're a man. I didn't understand most of it.
Back home, almost everything I did, I did in Hebrew. I went to drama school in Hebrew, my whole career was in Hebrew, and to switch languages was something that was fascinating and more complicated than I expected it to be, even though I've been speaking English since I could speak.
What's funny is I probably still have some calligraphy business cards floating out in the world, and I can't wait for someone to call me in a month or something, and say, 'Can you do these for my son's Bar Mitzvah?'
My bar mitzvah, I went to my nan's, and she made kugel.
Every bar mitzvah I ever went to was, 'Here comes 'Oh, What a Night.'
My parents' convictions, when it came to discipline, were not very strong. For my bar mitzvah, I gave out a mix tape of '90s grunge - if you got it now, you would think it was the 'Singles' soundtrack.
At some point in your life, if you live in Venezuela, you come across or own a cuatro. Either at school, either at camp, either at a friend's house, at a birthday or Christmas or bar mitzvah, you end up with a cuatro. It's like a must.
When my father came out on stage wearing a big cowboy hat and a shirt lettered 'Bar Mitzvah Ranch' to sing 'Home on the Range' in Yiddish, it was his way of saying, 'I want to be an American.'
Man, Dick Dale shreds. He's welcomed to anybody's bar mitzvah.