My brother had been given a chemistry set for his bar mitzvah, but he wasn't interested in it. It was upstairs in the attic, and I would sneak up there and use it at great peril because I was afraid if he found out, he would get very angry at me, but he didn't seem to care.

Eileen Pollack

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.

Adam Pally

You Would Were

I've had a bris, was Bar Mitzvahed and, on occasion, have referred to a temple as a shul. I've never denied it, nor have I disguised it. I am, indeed, a Jew.

Alan Zweibel

Temple T Refer

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.

America Ferrera

Wit Wing Win

If a girl comes to me first for a prom or a bar mitzvah and she likes the way she looks and her boyfriend likes the way she looks, she'll come back.

Betsey Johnson

Way T She

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.

Bruce Springsteen

Wedding Men You

Admitting that we ourselves are bar mitzvah boys is our way of letting non-Jews as well as Jews in the audience know that everything we're doing is meant in good fun; we're having fun with our background and don't want to be taken in the wrong way.

Bryan Fogel

Good Wrong Way Wrong

Posing on the red carpet feels like you're selling something that has nothing to do with you. If you do it with someone else, it's like we're saying, 'Oh! We come as a pair! Would you like to buy both of us? We're available for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs!'

Carey Mulligan

Wedding Pet Car

When the opportunity presented itself, I had never been bar mitzvahed. I wasn't going to pass it up.

Carlos Lopez-Cantera

Up Unity Unit

I'm the star of stage, screen, and television now, but I'm also available for children's parties and bar mitzvahs.

Chris Isaak

Art Age Vision

I remember going to a son's friend's bar mitzvah, and the text that he chose to explicate was right at the beginning of Genesis. It was not about a fall from grace or a fall from perfection; it was about an awakening into consciousness, which is what it means to be human.

Claire Messud

Which Wake Us

I was bar mitzvahed, which was hard. I feel it was the hardest thing I ever had to do; harder than making a movie. It was a lot of studying, you know. I wasn't a perfect Hebrew reader, and also, they say when you're reading your Torah portion, you're not supposed to memorize it. It turned out very tricky.

Clara Mamet

Your You Yin

I was raised Jewish and bar mitzvahed.

Dan Futterman

Wish T Raised

I grew up in a reform Jewish family in St. Louis. Our idea of Judaism was no bar mitzvahs and a Christmas tree that had a skirt at the bottom embroidered with the names of my grandparents.

Danny Meyer

Family Christmas Wit

I went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.

Daveed Diggs

Ted T School

I'm a good Jewish boy from Edison, New Jersey, so I went and saw 'Fiddler on the Roof' because you have to: that's part of your bar mitzvah experience.

David Bryan

Good Experience Art

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.

Devendra Banhart

Life Christmas Birthday

My brother had been given a chemistry set for his bar mitzvah, but he wasn't interested in it. It was upstairs in the attic, and I would sneak up there and use it at great peril because I was afraid if he found out, he would get very angry at me, but he didn't seem to care.

Eileen Pollack

Great Car Would

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.

Ellie Goulding

Wedding Wrong Would

My microphone skills were developed at a young age watching my dad on the microphone. My dad DJ'ed bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, things of that nature.

Enzo Amore

Nature Age Young

Every bar mitzvah I ever went to was, 'Here comes 'Oh, What a Night.'

Erich Bergen

Very T Oh

I was the - my trendsetting moment was my bar mitzvah had the first, like, temporary tattoo guy.

Evan Goldberg

I had one of those farcical bar mitzvahs where they spell out the words phonetically on index cards, and you don't even know what you're saying.

Francisco Goldman

The loss of my father marked my life. I'm 88 years old and I'm still mourning him because it's such a drama for me. It was just after my bar mitzvah and it was so tragic. The effect on me, I carry it all my life.

Frank Lowy

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?

Gilbert Gottfried

I just went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah. No crazy weird Jewish cult.

Hayden Schlossberg

I started singing weddings and bar mitzvahs at 15, lying about my age. It was a great discipline.

Idina Menzel

I just enjoyed bar mitzvahs as a kid, and there was this company in the Detroit area where I grew up, and I think they recruited me as a party dancer - you know, like, you dance around and pass out glow sticks. I quickly rose in the ranks and, within a year, became an emcee, which was kind of unheard of.

James Wolk

You can find old Jewish newspapers from Detroit that have my promotional ad in them. It was a totally insane time in my life. Paul Rudd was also a bar mitzvah emcee, you know? It was like being a local rock star in Detroit.

James Wolk

I was an emcee for bar mitzvahs from age sixteen to twenty-one.

James Wolk

Well yes, my son was bar mitzvahed last April, after I made this film.

Jami Gertz

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 was bar mitzvahed at Beth Shalom, and I had trouble. I didn't quite get it all.

Jeffrey Tambor

I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.

Jeremy Piven

A Bar Mitzvah is the time in his life when a Jewish boy realizes he has a better chance of owning a team than playing for one.

Jerry Reinsdorf

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.

Jesse Andrews

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.

Jesse Eisenberg

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.'

Joel Grey

After my bar mitzvah, I started to assimilate, to really not pay attention to my roots. The anti-Semitic experiences of my youth had been very painful. You try to put all that in the past and become a person of the world. I think that's the right thing to do. But it's not right to leave out who you really are. That's a tragedy.

Joel Grey

I went to bar mitzvahs as a kid. I had a lot of classmates who are Jewish.

John David Washington

Man, Dick Dale shreds. He's welcomed to anybody's bar mitzvah.

John Zorn

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.

Lenny Abrahamson

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

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?'

Meghan Markle

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading, my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure, I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book.

Neil Gaiman

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

Much of my music is inspired by what I heard at picnics and weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Neil Sedaka

I had a world theme at my Bar Mitzvah: each table was a different country. I had a miserable time. There was one picture of me, and I'm wearing a double-breasted suit. There were all these people having fun, and I'm just standing there. I look like a corporate lawyer who just found out he's not making partner.

Nick Kroll

All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers' unions have done good work in this field, K through 12. Delaying first communions and bar mitzvahs until age 21 would be another positive step.

P. J. O'Rourke

My bar mitzvah, I went to my nan's, and she made kugel.

Paul Rudd

Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.

R. L. Stine