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
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
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
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
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
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
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
When the opportunity presented itself, I had never been bar mitzvahed. I wasn't going to pass it up.
Carlos Lopez-Cantera
I'm the star of stage, screen, and television now, but I'm also available for children's parties and bar mitzvahs.
Chris Isaak
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
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
I was raised Jewish and bar mitzvahed.
Dan Futterman
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
I went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.
Daveed Diggs
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
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
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
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
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
Every bar mitzvah I ever went to was, 'Here comes 'Oh, What a Night.'
Erich Bergen
I was the - my trendsetting moment was my bar mitzvah had the first, like, temporary tattoo guy.
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.
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.
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?
I just went to Hebrew school, had a bar mitzvah. No crazy weird Jewish cult.
I started singing weddings and bar mitzvahs at 15, lying about my age. It was a great discipline.
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.
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.
I was an emcee for bar mitzvahs from age sixteen to twenty-one.
Well yes, my son was bar mitzvahed last April, after I made this film.
I was bar mitzvahed at Beth Shalom, and I had trouble. I didn't quite get it all.
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.
I'm not a boy now. I'm a man, I hope. I hope I've had my artistic bar mitzvah somewhere.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
I went to bar mitzvahs as a kid. I had a lot of classmates who are Jewish.
Man, Dick Dale shreds. He's welcomed to anybody's bar mitzvah.
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.
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.
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?'
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.
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.'
Much of my music is inspired by what I heard at picnics and weddings and bar mitzvahs.
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.
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.
My bar mitzvah, I went to my nan's, and she made kugel.
Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.
