A Quote by Neil Sedaka

I knew I had a remarkable voice, but I was embarrassed because it was so high. But when I sang at my bar mitzvah, the rabbi was in tears. He said to my parents, 'He must become a cantor in the synagogue,' but my mother said, 'No, he's going to be a concert pianist.'

Neil Sedaka

Quote Topics

Bar Bar Mitzvah Because Become Concert Embarrassed Going Had High Knew Mitzvah Mother Must Parents Pianist Rabbi Remarkable Said Sang Synagogue Tears Voice

Quote Author

Neil Sedaka
American - Musician
Born: March 13, 1939

In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.

Alan Dershowitz

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.

Billy Eichner

My mother always wanted to play an instrument. Her parents never gave her that. Then it got to a point where I'd been playing for 18 years, and to give it up would make me feel guilty. But my parents also knew that realistically, I wasn't going to become a concert pianist.

Lulu Wang

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.

Ron Ben-Israel

I have a wonderful synagogue, fantastic rabbi and cantor and membership, and they just enrich my life every day, and I learned so much from helping to grow our synagogue, grow our membership, and meet the needs of such a diverse population.

Jacky Rosen

I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

Alan Hovhaness

I was going to be a concert pianist, and when I was in high school, my parents were scared to death that I would focus too much on that too soon. And that I'd end up in some sort of dead end, and not fulfilling whatever potential they thought I had.

David Hyde Pierce

I actually got thrown into my Bar Mitzvah because my teacher, my Cantor, did not tell me that they would all say 'amen' at the end of each, for want of a better word, paragraph. And that threw me completely. I almost went into an Ella Fitzgerald sort of scat.

Jeffrey Tambor

I would say I'm black because my parents said I'm black. I'm black because my mother's black. I'm black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us, made it very clear what we were.

Soledad O'Brien

I come from probably many generations of singers because my grandmother had a really incredible voice and sang in church. And my mother had a gorgeous voice and was always singing around the house.

Patty Griffin

One day - I remember it was a Sabbath afternoon - I came to the synagogue with a book in my hand. I saw a commentary on the Bible by a certain Rabbi Moshe Dessauer, better known as Moses Mendelssohn. An elderly man came up to me - I was then maybe 10 or 12. "What are you studying?" he said. "Dessauer's commentaries," I said. So he gave me a slap on my face.

Elie Wiesel

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.

Lew Wasserman

The first expert said he had attention deficit disorder. The second expert said the first was out of order. One said he was autistic, another that he was artistic. One said he had Tourette's syndrome. One said he had Asperger's syndrome. And one said the problem was that his parents had Munchausen syndrome. Still another said all he needed was a good old-fashioned spanking.

Pseudonymous Bosch

My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning.

Judith Butler

I did go to cheder and was a bar mitzvah. We were members of an Orthodox synagogue, although we were not religious. My grandfather was Polish. He came to Ireland in the '30s.