Mazel Tov: Celebrities' Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories (11 page)

THE EXPRESSION GOES, “TODAY I AM A MAN.” WHAT DID YOU FEEL ON THAT DAY? “TODAY I AM A WO-MAN?”

I felt like a man. I felt like my prostate was enlarged. I felt like my PSA count was high that day. My voice got a little deeper. My balls dropped. It was really weird.

For more than thirty-five years, Gene Shalit has been a regular presence on NBC’s
Today,
the longest continuous run by one person on a daily network TV program.

He has been reviewing motion pictures, plays and books on television, radio and in major magazines for forty-one years.

His film reviews were a regular feature in
Look
magazine. He wrote the
What’s Happening
page for the
Ladies’ Home Journal
for twelve years. For a dozen years he wrote and broadcast a daily essay as
Man About Anything
on NBC’s coast-to-coast radio network. Shalit was carried on more stations than was any other NBC network radio feature.

He has been a regular panelist on
What’s My Line?
and
To Tell the Truth,
and has written articles for the
New York Times, Glamour, TV Guide, Seventeen, McCall’s,
and
Cosmopolitan.

Shalit has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston’s Symphony Hall and Tanglewood, played his bassoon on stage in Lincoln Center, and conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in a full concert of classical music. In none of these venues has he ever been invited back.

For national magazines and
Today,
he has interviewed scores of prominent personages in music, theater, and motion pictures, from the Grateful Dead to Sir James Galway to Steven Spielberg to Jessica Lange to Isaac Stern to Luciano Pavarotti to Helen Hayes to Benny Goodman to Mstislav Rostropovich to Sophia Loren to Sophia Loren to Sophia Loren.

Shalit’s critically acclaimed anthology of humor,
Laughing Matters
(Doubleday, 1987) was a bestseller. His
Great Hollywood Wit
(St. Martin’s Press) appeared in 2002.

Shalit was born in a New York hospital ever so long ago, and eight days later cut out for Newark, New Jersey, to be with his mother. Six years later (1932, for the mathematically challenged) he fled to Morristown, New Jersey, where he later became humor columnist for the high school paper and narrowly escaped expulsion.

Shalit was graduated from the University of Illinois, where he needed only six years to complete his four-year course. While an undergraduate, he was sports editor and humor columnist of the university’s daily broadsheet newspaper,
The Daily Illini,
“The World’s Greatest College Daily,” a columnist for the Twin Cities’
Champaign-Urbana Courier,
and was a Big Ten sports stringer for the Associated Press.

During major league baseball spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1994, Shalit was run over by a car. To the consternation of scores of Hollywood producers, he recovered.

GENE SHALIT THE CRITIC’S CHOICE

I don’t remember how old I was when I had my bar mitzvah, but it must have been around the time my father, Isadore Shalit, the Elder of the Learned Men of Morristown, New Jersey, said, “It occurs to me that our son is about to be, or at least is approaching the time when, according to the sages, a caterer needs to be chosen. Attention must be paid, and not only attention, but also a rabbi, a cantor, and a yarmulke purveyor, emphasis on the
vey.
”

Thus it came to pass that I was told about a bar mitzvah, which I had assumed was a ranch in Israel.

It was fortuitous that the Pine Brook synagogue was available for the fabled ceremony because my father had sputtered, “I wouldn’t set foot in the
farshlogunah
Morristown shul if you paid me!”

So my ceremony was moved thirteen miles to Pine Brook, one minute away the way my father drove.

The bar mitzvah (I was informed) signifies that the boy is now a Man and must from now on adhere to the Ten Commandments. Before that, he was on his own. Thus, too late did I discover that when I was nine I could have coveted my neighbor’s wife or made graven images if I had known what graven images were. My neighbor’s wife I knew.

Under the rules and regulations of bar mitzvahs, the Jews choose up sides, with the victim and his family on one side and guests (or “gift bearers”) on the other.

Arrives the agreed-upon Saturday morning, the innocent lad is led to the altar, where he must singsong a portion of the service called the haftarah in Hebrew if he knows what’s good for him.

This I memorized by rote (having no idea what the sounds meant) in the home of my teacher, Cantor Goldberg, every day after school, while hearing my friends outside happily yelling and playing Kick the Can.

What kept me going was my fantasy about what the Hebrew meant, often along the lines of “You will get good presents even from Aunt Bertha and not socks like when you were twelve, amen.” The cantor also worked at Drill’s Live Chicken Market on Speedwell Avenue, where he grabbed screaming chickens from their cages for customers and slit their throats (the chickens’) to render them kosher and deceased. He then tore out most of the feathers, leaving but a short stubble, which my mother (if it was her chicken) removed by burning them off over the gas stove, resulting in a smell that I never again smelled until my dentist, Dr. Glanville, attacked my teeth with an old drill (no relation to Old Man Drill, who owned the chicken store), reproducing that nauseating aroma.

Cantor Goldberg, a man with a bedraggled beard, took my forefinger and touched it to each word as I memorized it (simultaneously forgetting the previous word). To this day I can recall only the very first words. Phonetically they sound like “
Ahm zoo, toe zar tee lee, t’hee law see yo zah pay roo.
” The last time I heard Bob Dylan sing one of his songs the lyrics sounded exactly like that. But at the time, Dylan had not been born and his name (when he
was
born) was Zimmerman, not Dylan, which he glommed off the Welsh poet.

Memorization is not my long suit and I had only recently been allowed to wear a long suit as my old-world parents were short-pants-for-children traditionalists, not like today when even two-year-olds get into slacks directly from diapers, whereas the progression of my personal attire was diapers, short pants, knickers, dark blue bar mitzvah suit with two pairs of pants.

The great day dawned bright and clear. I remember Pine Brook flooded by all of my relatives from Brooklyn, disoriented by the absence of sirens and screeching brakes, fearing they were on some overgrown planet and my cousins saying in disbelief, “You live here in the
winter
? What do you
do
?”

On that Saturday morning Americans by the millions across the country set out for work and made sudden U-turns when they realized it was Saturday morning, the Jewish day of rest (except for me), and although they were for the most part Christian, they said if Jews don’t have to go to the office today we’re not going either. On the other hand, there I was up at the altar in a suit with jacket too loose (which I was afraid my bowels would soon be also), in front of a congregation that included all of my pals I knew were hoping I would forget the words and be embarrassed and they’d razz me.

Then the rabbi pinched my back and it was my turn and I must have navigated the Hebraic rapids successfully, for no thunderbolt crashed upon me and my mother and father stared in relief.

Later, at the sweet table of tea and wine and yellow sponge cake set up in the aromatic gym, I was cluckingly reprimanded by uncles and aunts who said they had never before been to a bar mitzvah where the boy had not made a speech or in some way publicly thanked his parents.

Never mind my not making a speech. Enough I had agreed to wear a tie.

That night back in Morristown when we opened the gifts I remember three fountain pens, some five-dollar bills, one ten, a pair of binoculars, a Monopoly game, a deck of pinochle cards and from Aunt Bertha two pairs of socks. Brown with maroon dots.

I kept the pens, the binoculars and Monopoly. I lost the money playing pinochle. But the next day none of us could figure out what had happened to the socks.

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist, Ronald Owen Perelman was born to be in the boardroom. When he was an eleven-year-old boy, he was attending board meetings for Belmont Industries, a sheet-metal manufacturing plant owned by his father. Two years later he was bar mitzvahed at thirteen and became a man. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and earned his MBA from the Wharton School in 1966 and joined Belmont Industries, where he stayed until the late 1970s. In 1978 Ronald Perelman began building his empire. He was thirty-five at the time and had wanted to be president of Belmont Industries, but his father disagreed and kept his presidential post.

In 1979, Perelman bought Cohen Hatfield Industries, a jewelry business, and then acquired MacAndrews & Forbes, which became the name of Perelman’s holding company. Ronald Perelman continued to buy disparate companies: Marvel Entertainment, Golden State Bank Corp., the Coleman Company and Consolidated Cigar Holdings.

He is now chairman and chief executive officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. In the corporation’s portfolio are some of the most successful companies in their individual lines of business: Revlon, Panavision Inc., AlliedBarton Security Services, AM General, TransTech Pharma, Inc.; Scientific Games Corporation, Deluxe Film, and Clarke American Corp.

Ronald Perelman has interests outside of the business world. As a philanthropist who combines personal resolve and financial resources to get results, he founded Revlon/ UCLA Women’s Cancer Research Program, which focuses on breast and ovarian cancer. The program initiated the development of Herceptin, a genetically based cancer treatment and the first of its kind to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Skin diseases are researched at the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology at the New York University Medical Center, and patients are given the highest quality of care. Perelman is a board member of Carnegie Hall, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University Medical Center, and he is a member of the French Legion of Honor.

Ronald Perelman lives in New York City and is the father of six children.

RONALD PERELMAN, BILLION DOLLAR BABY

I was bar mitzvahed in a small Conservative synagogue in Philadelphia. I hope this doesn’t sound really boring, but my bar mitzvah was probably the most important element of my early years. It was important religious training for me. I grew to really enjoy the lessons and became very close to my teacher. He soon passed away, but he was a very religious man, and very smart. He had this enormous impact on me. I’m Orthodox now, but I grew up in a Conservative family. My bar mitzvah was December 31st, which was a day away from my birthday. I was born January 1st. So we had this terrific New Year’s Eve/bar mitzvah party on Saturday night, December 31st. There were about two hundred fifty people there—relatives, my friends and my parents’ friends. It was billed as my becoming a man and that’s how I thought of it. From that moment on I felt more responsibility for being a Jew.

But my real move toward my religion occurred a few years later, when I was in Israel. It had a dramatic impact on me, and I remember it well. It was when I was in Israel with my family that I became very conscious of being a Jew—much more so than after my bar mitzvah—and I wanted to raise my family in a more traditional lifestyle. I was only eighteen at the time, but I was married when I was twenty. We got married young back then, you know, back in the old days of the covered wagon. After that I became more aware of being more observant and kosher, and more aware of how I wanted to train my kids in their Jewish background. But the foundation of my beliefs was laid by my bar mitzvah teacher. So it had a profound effect on me.

WHAT WAS THE PROCESS LIKE, PREPARING FOR YOUR BIG DAY?

It wasn’t bad. Back then we all had records. The cantor would make a recording of your part, and over the summer and all through the year you’d listen to this recording and sing along with it. That’s how we learned. My singing voice was not very good. It’s improved since then, but it was not very good.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR OTHER VIVID MEMORIES OF THAT TIME.

I remember that my bar mitzvah party was a lot of fun. There were a lot of kids there and they all had fun. I’m not friendly with any of them anymore, which is sort of sad. The one who was my closest friend, probably through ninth grade, and next to me in all the pictures, was this boy named Gene. And about fifteen years ago I get this little one-page note, “Dear Mr. Perelman, Are you the Ron Perelman that grew up in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania?” Signed “Gene.” So I said to my sister, “This is the greatest thing, I found my buddy Gene this week.” So, I write back this letter. “Yes, I’m that guy. Tell me what you’ve been doing.” He writes me a four-page letter. “Dear Ronald, I’m now in a Miami correctional institution.” The letter went on and on and on. I think he wanted me to get him out of jail. So I tossed that in the wastebasket and never reached out. I haven’t seen my friend Gene again. But I’ve got his pictures all over my bar mitzvah album.

YOU’RE KNOWN TO BE A VERY CONFIDENT, POWERFUL GUY. DID YOU POSSESS THESE QUALITIES BACK THEN?

At thirteen years old you just want to get through it. You just want to finish up and get through it. I mean, you’re twelve or thirteen years old. I think I didn’t come into my stride until after college, between college and graduate school. But I was competitive in my little world. I didn’t think beyond my little world and looking back, I wasn’t the most popular kid in the class but I was reasonably popular. I remember something that happened in, I think, ninth grade. I called up this girl named Ellen Friedman, who was a very popular girl in my school. And I said to her, “This is Ronnie. I’d like you to come to the dance with me next Friday night.” And she said, “Great.” And started talking and talking and talking for about five minutes. And then she says, “Is this Ron Shapiro?” I said, “No. This is Ronnie Perelman.” She says, “Oh, I’m busy.” I learned a lot from that. You pick yourself up and you go on to the next girl.

YOU’RE CERTAINLY IN A POSITION TO THROW A BAR OR BAT MITZVAH WHERE THE SKY’S THE LIMIT. HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THESE EXTRAVAGANZAS AND CELEBRATIONS TODAY?

I think it’s terrible. My daughter Samantha’s party was a nice party, a fun party, but a simple party. And that’s what I would expect my daughter Caleigh’s to be. In other words, nothing elaborate about it. There was no spectacular anything. There was no big-name entertainment. It was not an over-the-top party. And they really do get over the top. I mean the themes and the activities. I think that’s just silly and takes away from the meaning. This is something to celebrate, and it’s something that clearly should be a memorable activity, but I don’t think it should be so outlandish that it’s in bad taste. These days, I think that is done too often. In a lot of communities, particularly in the suburbs, this is a great status symbol. Who can give the biggest and the most expensive and be the most extraordinary? It’s a shame that it does sometimes overshadow the religious experience. But they get religious experience along with it, so I guess that’s better than nothing.

CONSIDERING YOU’RE ORTHODOX, WHAT IMPACT DOES RELIGION PLAY IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE?

For me, religion is very important. I believe that we don’t get to where we are on our own. Part of it is through our efforts. Part of it is where we’re put to achieve those results. Every morning I talk to a rabbi whom I’ve known for forty-five years in Philadelphia. Every day, we go over the Torah portion for that day in a short time, around five minutes. I call him, no matter where I am in the world. And then once a week we’ll meet and have a more expanded conversation. This is very important to me. And I think it’s good for my kids to see this, so it will be important to them, too. So I think it’s more about understanding or accepting—your role and your activities, and the impact and lack of impact that that has brought about the results. There’s also an obligation to give back to those who are less fortunate than you. So every Saturday I go to synagogue and when I get called before the Torah, it has that same sort of impact as my bar mitzvah. A bar mitzvah can happen at different times. I once had an assistant, a red-headed Irish kid named Durnam. And after about three years with me, he told me that his mother was not Irish. She was Jewish. Of course, that makes him Jewish in the eyes of the Jewish religion. He had never been bar mitzvahed. So, on one of my trips, when we had a minyan, he got bar mitzvahed. This had an enormous effect on his life. He now is a Jew. He always knew that he had a Jewish mother, but he never connected the dots. It meant a lot to me to be able to do this for him.