Mazel Tov: Celebrities' Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories (2 page)

As the son of two acting teachers, Jeremy Piven certainly had great footsteps to follow in and his stellar career speaks for itself. With close to fifty film credits under his belt, plus an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a comedy, playing Agent Ari Gold in HBO’s
Entourage,
Piven, known for his scene stealing roles, is truly on a roll himself.

Born on July 26, 1965, to Byrne and Joyce Hiller Piven, acting was in his blood long before his bar mitzvah. Byrne and Joyce studied acting, and in 1967, the entourage, including Byrne and Joyce, Jeremy, and his older sister, Shira, relocated to Chicago from New York. In Chicago the Pivens founded the Piven Theatre Workshop. At eight, Jeremy had his first acting job in his parents’ theater, doing Chekhov. He graduated from Evanston Township High School, where he played football, and attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

At the age of nine, he befriended John Cusack, who, with his sister, Joan, was a student at the Piven Theatre Workshop. Years later, Piven and Cusack founded New Crime Productions, which can take credit for
Grosse Pointe Blank
and
High Fidelity.
Among his dozens of films are
Lucas, The Player, Bob Roberts, Singles, Miami Rhapsody,
and
Old School
, and
Keeping Up with the Steins,
which is about one-upsmanship in the bar mitzvah world. Piven displayed his ability to rap in Hebrew in the 2004 film
Chasing Liberty.
He was in a variety of television shows, beginning with
Carol & Company
and continuing in programs such as
The Larry Sanders Show, Ellen, Seinfeld,
and
Entourage.

At thirteen Jeremy Piven celebrated his bar mitzvah, in a wholly unlikely location.

KEEPING UP
WITH JEREMY PIVEN

I was bar mitzvahed in Evanston, Illinois, in a church because we were a very liberal congregation of Reform Jews, called Reconstructionists. My father used to joke that we prayed to To Whom It May Concern.

Besides the studying part, I helped prepare for the event by drawing the picture on the invitation, which was so much fun. I drew pictures of the band KISS and I drew things that I loved from inside the Torah. My parents structured the day. The ceremony was modest but I think there were about two hundred people there. Only about forty were my friends. The rest was family. My parents read poetry, and because they’re real artists, it was a pretty cool bar mitzvah. We didn’t have a band but afterwards there was dancing in my basement. I put on my records. I wanted to honor the occasion in my own way. I didn’t really have any reverence for the big party. It wasn’t a big community of people battling each other for the biggest bar mitzvah, like in my movie
Keeping Up with the Steins.

I had no desire for the big fancy party. And we were a theater family living in Evanston. It was just a way of gathering my friends together, and to take part in the tradition that my father had passed down to me. My friends showed up. I didn’t really have a girlfriend at the time, but a girl that I liked showed up. And I think it was a real novelty to them, because it was one of the only bar mitzvahs going. For the most part, my friends had not been to one. So it was a new experience and they loved it.

But being thirteen wasn’t only about the bar mitzvah. At the time, I was also playing football. That was a real focal point of my life. My team actually would win quite a bit, and after a game, the team would go to McDonald’s to celebrate. Instead of going to McDonald’s, my father took me, one of the very few white kids on the team, to Hebrew school. So, unfortunately, my Jewishness was introduced in a negative way, but in time I grew to appreciate it all.

Turning thirteen and being bar mitzvahed is a rite of passage. We all need rites of passage and markings of times and all these things. And it meant a lot to my father. So at the time it may have been even more about him than me, and what a beautiful thing for him to pass on to me. My father was very religious and incredibly active in his community. He was a singer and probably would have been a cantor or a rabbi had he not been an actor. He was very connected to his Judaism.

DURING YOUR BAR MITZVAH, DID YOU LIKE ADDRESSING A GROUP OF PEOPLE, THINKING, “HEY, I COULD GET USED TO THIS.”

You have to understand that from the time I was eight years old, my parents were putting me up on the stage. I was working with them. And I was in classes and doing improv, and so I was always acting with them, and that was our temple, in a way. But I never got ahead of myself and thought, Well, this is what I’m going to be doing for the rest of my life.

YOU CAME FROM A VERY INTERESTING BACKGROUND. WERE YOU ALWAYS THE CENTER OF ATTENTION?

I guess I was kind of popular back then. My mother, or my sister, probably would’ve said I was. I do like to laugh and I like to make other people laugh. Definitely, my parents said I was jumping up and landing on my side to get people to laugh very early on.

DO I DARE ASK—WHAT DID YOU LOOK LIKE BACK THEN?

I had a big chubby bar mitzvah boy face and what was bordering on a mullet. I liked the suit. The suit looked great. It was a pinstriped, three-piece suit with the big, wide white collar. I was very into
Saturday Night Fever.
I remember seeing a picture with John Travolta behind me, from
Saturday Night Fever.
I was holding an album of Parliament and the P-Funk All-Stars, with Bootsy Collins and George Clinton and everyone. It was a beautiful, wonderful time. I’ll never forget it.

And looking back, I can’t help but think how lucky I was to have this really loving, cool, artistic family. We just didn’t have a lot of money, but if you don’t miss it, who cares? And I mean that.

YOUR FILM,
KEEPING UP WITH THE STEINS,
SHEDS QUITE A LIGHT ON THE BAR MITZVAH EXPERIENCE, BUT IT WAS THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF YOUR OWN BLESSED EVENT.

Oh yeah, well completely. That’s why I thought it was really interesting, because I learned that this world exists: people getting these rap stars to come to their bar mitzvahs and more. It’s just so right for comedy, a world that I didn’t experience, but thought it would be so funny to explore. And so I had a blast, but it was quite different than my experience. The movie is about forgiveness and connection and love in this family, but to get there you have to go through a bunch of dysfunctional people.

YOU ARE SINGLE, NO KIDS YET, BUT IF YOU HAD A SON, WOULD YOU WANT HIM TO BE BAR MITZVAHED?

It would be great. It would be a completely amazing gift.

Fashion icon Michael Kors was born in 1959 and grew up on Long Island, not far from New York City, where he would become a leading designer of women’s and men’s clothing (he is now called “King Kors”). From the beginning Kors had a keen sense of design and was completely obsessed by how the world around him looked. His bar mitzvah stands out as his first opportunity to create the look of a big celebration, from top to toe. His parents were happy to have the input. His mother was one of his first teachers in the art of design and he went on to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Just six years after his bar mitzvah, when he was nineteen, Kors was designing for the New York boutique, Lothar’s. In 1981, he launched his own women’s wear line, which sold in Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdales and other stores. He introduced a signature fragrance for women in 2000. He launched his men’s fragrance in 2001, and then in 2002, he created his extensive menswear line, which grew from a small collection he started in 1997. In 2004, Michael Kor’s newest collection, MICHAEL, was launched in over three hundred fifty locations. This collection offers women’s ready-to-wear, swimwear and a complete line of accessories including handbags, shoes, watches, eyewear, and belts.

Fans of clothing by Kors include Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Barbra Streisand, Sharon Stone, Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, whose wardrobe Kors produced for the 1999 remake of
The Thomas Crown Affair.
Besides making clothes that make the woman and the man, Kors also became a television personality, as an “underwhelmed” judge on
Project Runway.

After being bar mitzvahed, Michael Kors went on to receive many other honors. Vogue anointed him one of the most influential designers of the decade in 1996. Three years later, he was awarded the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Award for Womenswear Designer of the Year, and Lighthouse International honored him with the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2003, he won the CFDA Menswear Award.

MICHAEL KORS, DESIGNING KID

I was always a fashion freak. My mother and I turned the whole arranging of my bar mitzvah into a year and a half of “What’s the matchbook look like, what’s the invitation look like, what’s the centerpiece, what are you wearing? Who’s wearing what, when, how?” So, of course, I loved all that. My personal theme was blue for the day and brown at night. The invitation, it was all mustard and chocolate brown. Mustard envelopes, mustard matches. It was the seventies. Mustard was a basic.

My bar mitzvah was not typical. When people called my mom and said, “What should I wear?” my mother said, “Wear whatever you want. If you want to wear a gown, wear a gown. If you want to wear jeans, wear jeans. If you want to wear a bikini, wear a bikini.” So my parents had a lot of friends who were full hippie-dippie. And they all came in gauze and embroidered jeans, riding on motorcycles.

And then my uncle wore a leather jacket and shirt unbuttoned to his waist. And my aunt wore a bikini top and matching cotton pants. I didn’t come from the normal family. Everyone was young; my mom had me young. It was the counterculture bar mitzvah.

My Jewish relatives all came in evening gowns, even though it was outside and supposedly casual on the water. My Episcopalian relatives all came as though they were going to the country club in navy blazers and white pants. So we had this strange convergence. All of my friends’ mothers were totally perplexed. “He can wear jeans?” And my mom said, “He can wear whatever he wants.”

I was the fashion designer back then, full tilt. I’m an only child so, for my mom, the event was really exciting. And she always trusted my judgment. My grandmother kept telling her, “You can’t let a twelve-year-old decide on the dinner menu.” But she did to a certain extent.

My bar mitzvah would’ve been more off the wall, actually, if my mother had let me really go for it. I wanted to serve fondue. The idea nearly gave my grandmother a heart attack. My grandmother: “It’s June. It’s hot. They’re Jewish people. They’re not eating hot cheese on a piece of bread for dinner.” In my defense, fondue and quiche were very trendy at the moment. It was that time of ferns in a hanging basket, fondue and quiche.

Even back when I grew up, the bar mitzvahs were way over the top, and thematic. There was always a theme, a crazy theme. Mine wasn’t over the top, but it was different. It was in a tent on the water. It was low key. We had two bands, a classic bar mitzvah band, which played “Hava Nagila” and all of that, and then we had a folksinging couple from Vermont, Dick and Georgia. And when they started singing, you could see that all the Jewish relatives were thinking: “Who the hell are they?” I loved that.

WELL, YOU SEEMED VERY MUCH IN CONTROL OF THE SITUATION, DICTATING ALL YOUR DEMANDS. WERE YOU AT ALL APPREHENSIVE ABOUT GETTING UP IN FRONT OF THE CROWD?

No. I was a performer. I’ve always been a performer. That wasn’t the problem. I
was
scared I’d mess up. But I loved the whole process of getting bar mitzvahed. It’s funny, when I got bar mitzvahed in the 1970s on Long Island, it was bar mitzvah madness. The synagogues couldn’t even manage to give you your own date. So two boys got bar mitzvahed at the same time. I was bar mitzvahed with another boy, named Mitchell Tansmen, who I later saw at my high school reunion. He was nice but he was very studious and very serious. And he was very nervous. And his parents were sort of straight and narrow. His mother was head of the sisterhood, and his father was part of the young men’s association. My mom was in a mini-dress and my dad had long hair, it was longer than my mother’s, and he had a handlebar mustache. We were the alternative bar mitzvah family.

This will sound so incredibly shallow, but I was truly style and shopping obsessed. Our family had friends who were just the WASP-iest people on the planet, who had never been to a bar mitzvah, and really did not know that you basically give a check or a cash gift. When I was in front of the crowd, I saw the friends in the back of the temple. And I was sitting waiting to go up and do my haftarah. They had an enormous brown-and-white-striped Bendel box sitting with them. And all I could think of was, What’s in the box? I wanted to get over this whole haftarah moment, and let’s just find out what’s in the Bendel box. I think my grandfather said something about the gift not being in an envelope. But I didn’t want the cash. I wanted the Bendel box. At that point in my life I was obsessed. I was doing a makeover on every person I ever met.

THANK GOODNESS. I WAS NOT A GUEST AT YOUR BAR MITZVAH! SO THAT OLD EXPRESSION, “TODAY I AM A MAN” REALLY APPLIED TO YOU THAT DAY?

I didn’t wake up that morning and suddenly think, Oh, my God, I’m going to be an adult, a man overnight. But I do think that in a quieter way, my bar mitzvah did let me know that, as an adult, your opinions really do count. Your actions count as an adult. It is your adult introduction to some of these people, people your parents do business with or whatever. It is your first adult moment. So I think that it has impact. The bar mitzvah is such a big deal. It was funny, in the days before my bar mitzvah, we had semihurricanes all week. So it rained every day. It was horrible. Endless rain, endless rain, endless rain. I thought the dance floor would sink into the mud. And the morning of my bar mitzvah, I woke up and it was sunny and beautiful. And I thought, Maybe there is something to all this. And you know the dance floor still sunk, actually.

A large party, a tiny party, whether you had a thousand people or you had twenty people, it doesn’t matter. For me it was exciting just to have everyone around who was important to me: my family, my friends, everyone, my neighbors, all gathered together honoring this momentous day. Who knew I would do this? I was, quite honestly, terrible in Hebrew school. I was never really good in any school, to be honest with you. But in Hebrew school, specifically, I was not a great student. I was really more interested in going home and seeing
Dark Shadows
on television or watching
The Mike Douglas Show
rather than going to my Hebrew lessons. So I do remember being scared over my lack of preparation about a month before my bar mitzvah.

My mother was, like, “So, how are you doing?” And I’m like, “Good.” And my mother’s saying, “Do you want to recite a little for me?” And at this point I could recite maybe two lines which I had memorized. I didn’t learn how to read Hebrew. And I guess it’s in moments like this that it was good that my father’s family is not Jewish. They had no idea that my pronunciation wasn’t perfect. I think I was their first bar mitzvah, so it was news to them. Meanwhile, there were my other grandparents; my grandmother was rolling her eyes at my phonetic pronunciations.

NOW WHAT LEFT MORE OF AN IMPRESSION ON YOU: THE SERVICE OR THE PARTY?

I think I knew the sentimental value but the religious value, honestly, no. We were beyond Reform Jews. I mean, here we were: “Thank you so much for coming, have a glass of wine.” I have wonderful Jewish prince memories of the two things that I’m so fortunate to have experienced: the years of sleepaway camp and a bar mitzvah. Because I mean, especially on Long Island, if you didn’t have a bar mitzvah, you’d want to have one, even if you were an Irish Catholic. You had to have one. Now people do have bar mitzvahs for non-Jewish children. That’s the trend in New York now.

DID YOU KNOW BACK THEN YOU WANTED TO BE INVOLVED IN FASHION? WERE YOUR PARENTS SUPPORTIVE OF YOU?

Well it was a toss-up between show business and fashion. And let’s be honest. Fashion is show business. It’s all the same. When I think about what I was like when I was twelve, I certainly picked the right thing. Because, as I said, I was obsessed with every detail.

My parents totally loved it. I mean, loved it. My mother and my grandmother never saw eye to eye on fashion. They always were like Endora and Samantha on
Bewitched
when it came to fashion. And my grandparents wore matching outfits to the synagogue. They wore red, white and blue head to toe. My grandfather wore a red, white and blue tie with a navy blazer and pinstriped pants with a red and navy hat and leather Gucci loafers. Insane. My grandmother wore this crazy navy and white dress with red trim.

I asked my mother to wear spring colors to the bar mitzvah. My grandmother didn’t like the dress and told her, “I think it’s too much color. You know, you should wear something simpler.” And my mother said to my grandmother, “I’m thin enough. I can wear whatever I want. If you were a size four, and five feet eight, this is what you would wear.” My grandmother said, “Well, fine. Wear whatever you want.” And then my grandmother showed up in this red, white and blue number. My mother whispered to me, “And she thinks that’s flattering?” I didn’t like the dress either, but I loved my grandfather’s shoes. He bought those shoes just for the bar mitzvah.

My friends were dressed in everything and anything. I had a girlfriend, Judy Lerner, who wore a powder blue and white striped cotton jersey gown, like a tank gown, to the floor that was slit up both sides to the waist with matching hot pants and white stockings with the white platform shoes. And she was a head taller than me, of course. I loved the hot pants.

This was about the time when the movie
Goodbye, Columbus
came out. It was my very favorite movie. Brenda Patimkin is my favorite person ever, ever, ever. Brenda Patimkin is the ultimate Jewish girl of all time. When she snapped her bikini bottom…

When I think about my bar mitzvah it was something akin to a wedding. It had that kind of excitement and that kind of planning and all that constant back-and-forth. I was overwhelmed. I was not underwhelmed. And then there was the money at the end of it. My mother didn’t want me to go wild but she let me decide what to do with it. I wanted an Afghan hound, a dog. So I got one and the rest I banked for college. Of course, as my mother, years later, said, an ivory-colored Afghan hound was not exactly a normal thirteen-year-old boy’s dog choice. You know, I thought I was in, like, an art deco movie. Then, right before I left for college, I took some of the money and bought a fabulous wardrobe, and a Cartier watch and a few other things. I was Jappy and proud of it. I am completely proud of it. I do not think it’s derogatory at all. And I think it’s a plus.