Mitzvah Quotes

When I am at home, I never go near the synagogue unless, say, there is a bar or bat mitzvah involving the children of friends. But when I am traveling, in a country where Jewish life is scarce or endangered, I often make a visit to the shul. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I was 13 or 14 and I met Donald Trump at a bar mitzvah of a good friend of ours, who's friends with him. He had his girlfriend at the time with him, that Melania with him. He said, 'Hey guys, if you work hard and be successful, you'll get one of these.' I'll never forget that. And now he's married to her. ~ Jason Spezza

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 read the Bible when I was 12 while studying for my bar mitzvah. I was also reading a lot of Dilbert comics at the time, and I guess the two kind of got fused in my mind. I've always imagined God as an irrational, distractible boss. It's my best explanation for our planet. ~ Simon Rich

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

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. ~ Andy Kindler

Everyone in my grade is turning 13, so there are bunches of bar and bat mitzvahs. They're very dressy. It's fun picking out outfits. One girl, for her bat mitzvah, wore a huge red ball gown! ~ Elle Fanning

I suppose the nearest equivalent to a bar mitzvah in terms of emotional build-up would probably not even be one's wedding day, but one's coronation. ~ Maureen Lipman

Steven Spielberg's mother, who said to E.T., I don't care where you're from, you're here and you're gonna get bar mitzvahed! Never got a dinner! ~ Red Buttons

When I was 13 and 14, there were a lot of jokes about my bar mitzvah and my grandparents, and then when I got older, it became more about touching boobs and trying to get liquor. I kind of ran the gamut of infantile behavior and I haven't moved one step forward since. ~ Seth Rogen

My bat mitzvah portion is about many things, but I think it is primarily about who we are wholly there for, and how that, more than anything else, defines our identity. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

To suggest, as Shine does, that my father was in some way mean-spirited is totally unfair. Holding back David's career was not in the least my father's aim. He was extremely proud of his son and nurtured his talent in every way. He was David's strongest advocate. But allowing any boy who had just turned fourteen to live by himself so far away without proper provisions being made for him would have been irresponsible, to say the least.
In David's case, it would have been particularly inappropriate. He had never been abroad before; he was completely hopeless in practical matters; and he needed to be looked after, cooked for, and cared for. He was also by that time behaving rather erratically, although of course we did not know then that these may have been the first signs of a serious mental illness. My father's attitude was proved correct: when David did go to London of his own volition four years later, he fell ill and ended up receiving psychiatric care.
In any case there simply wasn't enough money available to finance the trip to America. Contrary to what is related in Shine, where my father and Mr. Rosen decide that David should have a bar mitzvah as a method of raising money for this trip, David had already had his bar mitzvah almost a year earlier, when he turned thirteen, the usual age for this ceremony. His bar mitzvah had nothing to do with "digging for gold," as Mr. Rosen puts it in Shine, in one of several offensive references in the film to Jews or Ju ~ Margaret Helfgott

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 saw the most frightening, most depressing sight I had ever seen - a row of stores with Stars of David and the word 'Jude' painted on them, and inside, behind half-empty counters, people in a daze, cringing like they didn't know what hit them and didn't know where the next blow would come from. Hitler had been in power only six months, and his boycott was already in full effect. I hadn't been so wholly conscious of being a Jew since my bar mitzvah, and it was the first time since I'd had the measles that I was too sick to eat. ~ Harpo Marx

Religious Jews are protected from serving creditors. One of the 613 mitzvah is not to borrow with interest (Deuteronomy 23:20). Unwise borrowing puts you in a position of servitude (Proverbs 22:7). Much ~ H.W. Charles

This is hands down the biggest, most exciting thing I've ever been involved with in my life. I can only compare it to my Bar Mitzvah. ~ Shia Labeouf

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

Keep in mind too, our failures serve to teach us, and usually teach us more than our successes do. What we may perceive as a failure is also an opportunity for someone else to rise to the occasion and perform a mitzvah, or mitzvot. Do not begrudge someone their joyous performance of mitzvot. Sometimes, perhaps even more often then you may think, what we consider our failures were blessings in disguise for ourselves, or others, or everyone. Abraham did not change the world just because he himself changed, and followed his own destiny. He changed the world through his giving others opportunities to rise to their own greatness. ~ Laura Weakley

For a degenerate like me, Vegas is like a walk down memory lane. Last time I went to Vegas, I went to my old coke dealer's kid's bar mitzvah. ~ Artie Lange

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

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. ~ Seth Rogen

I had already been a young singer. And once, as a profession, I was a young singer, what you would call a soprano in England, but I was an alto in singing Jewish music in bar mitzvahs and weddings and synagogues throughout New York City because, after Israel, New York is probably the biggest Jewish community in the world. ~ Charlemagne Palestine

Mitzvah" is Hebrew for "colossal pain in the ass. ~ Jesse Andrews

People need what they think of as a poem to be read at their bar mitzvah, their wedding, a funeral, whatever. And people are looking for hope and inspiration. I understand that. ~ Joan Larkin

I never really liked "cool" books. I plowed through as much Borges and Joyce as possible, read the first half of V. and spent whole Bar Mitzvah checks on Beat poetry. ~ Simon Rich

Clear, crisp, and compelling ... Mitzvah Girls is a thoughtful look at the world of Jewish girls who grow up in 21st-century America, but don't really. ~ David Wolpe

Theo, Celery doesn't think you should invite Lulu to your hypothetical Bar Mitzvah. ~ Gitty Daneshvari

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

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

In high school, I taught dance classes for 3-year-olds up to 16-year-olds, so between that and some bat mitzvah money, I saved up a pretty good nest egg to move to L.A. ~ Dianna Agron

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

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

Listen my darling, here's the situation – Wait … Un gazz, I'm talkin to a robot here, right? Again. So! uh-huh! how you're doing? how long you been a robot … You wouldn't be Jewish, by any chance? Yeah, like when you were thirteen, did your parents give you a bot mitzvah? ~ Thomas Pynchon

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

I had survived the work gangs in the ghetto. Baked bread under cover of night. Hidden in a pigeon coop. Had a midnight bar mitzvah in the basement of an abandoned building. I had watched my parents be taken away to their deaths, had avoided Amon Goeth and his dogs, had survived the salt mines of Wieliczka and the sick games of Trzebinia. I had done so much to live, and now, here, the Nazis were going to take all that away with their furnace!
I started to cry, the first tears I had shed since Moshe died. Why had I worked so hard to survive if it was always going to end like this? If I had known, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have let them kill me back in the ghetto. It would have been easier that way. All that I had done was for nothing. ~ Alan Gratz

A mitzvah that costs money is worth more than one that costs nothing. ~ Nachman Of Breslov

I think my first experience of art, or the joy in making art, was playing the horn at some high-school dance or bar mitzvah or wedding, looking at a roomful of people moving their bodies around in time to what I was doing. There was a piano player, a bass player, a drummer, and my breath making the melody. ~ Robert Pinsky

Most of the students, and probably the faculty, were ambivalent about the whole idea of Disciplines. They were socially divisive, the theory behind them was weak, and everybody ended up studying pretty much the same curriculum anyway, so what was the point? But it was traditional for every student to have one, so a Discipline every student would have. Alice called it her magic bat mitzvah. ~ Lev Grossman

I had been coming to New York, pretty much once a month, to dance on Broadway. I was offered a huge Broadway show but couldn't do it because my brother was having his huge Bar Mitzvah. ~ Sami Gayle