Mazel Tov: Celebrities' Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories (8 page)

J
OSH:
Oh, sure. I went and I looked at JTS [Jewish Theological Seminary]. I considered rabbinical school very seriously. But—

A
NDY:
That’s where the beard started.

J
OSH:
That’s where the beard started.

A
NDY:
He had a beard, a bigger beard.

J
OSH:
I did want to be a rabbi when I was younger. It was right after my year of study.

A
NDY:
I don’t remember ever aspiring to be a rabbi. I didn’t spend a year in Israel [as] Josh did. What I love most about the Jewish spirit and the Jewish tradition is its questioning of the world and not taking anything for granted. I love really deeply investigating for yourself what does this mean, whether it’s in the Talmud and the debates over Jewish meaning or Kabbalah, or the daily and weekly debates that take place in synagogues all over the world, where people ask themselves: Who am I? What are we doing here? What’s important to me? How should I raise my family?

I think that of all the traditions one can be raised in, I’m proud to have been raised in a Jewish tradition, because it instilled in me a really deep love of questioning things in a way that’s both scholarly and practical. And that will definitely play a part in my family life, when I have one, if I have one. Who knows?

But whether or not it’s manifested in symbols like the bar mitzvah, I think there would be a conversation initially with my future wife and then with our children, and their thoughts about life. I would want them to question everything. And if they do and we do feel that this particular rite of passage has value for them, I would totally embrace that.

J
OSH:
Whereas I would definitely have my child bar mitzvahed.

HOW WAS IT TO SHARE IN THIS AS TWINS?

A
NDY:
I love that I was bar mitzvahed with Josh, because I was less scared. We could practice together. Every time we had to go see the cantor and practice our haftarah portion, we were always on the same page. We shared the same schedule. We shared the same experiences. So for me—and this is the case in so many ways in my life—having had Josh along with the same experiences and often the same perspective on things, it’s always made the experience richer.

I think that the bar mitzvah actually turned out to be where we started as individuals, splitting off a little bit. Up till then, it was basically the Josh and Andy Show. And we did everything together. We even wore some of the same clothes, just different colors.

And shortly after that, our father died. And Josh’s interest in exploring his world went external, and he would go off to the West to ride horses and live out his adventures and explore his world. And I became more internal and turned toward psychology and understanding the mind. And I think looking back, if you were to trace our paths and how they’ve diverged just from the outsider’s perspective, it was really around the time of our bar mitzvah which marked the turning point for us to start looking at what made us
us
.

J
OSH:
I also think that it’s interesting to see now how Andy and I are both very individual and self-confident and motivated, ambitious people. But at the same time, there is that yin and yang aspect. When I was a kid and I had those summers on ranches or scuba diving or mountain climbing, I would come back and bring those adventures to the household, and Andy and I would live through each other’s adventures vicariously. It’s sort of like we get twice as much done in the same amount of time. There’s an unusual bond. I don’t pretend to be Andy and he doesn’t pretend to be me. But we can share each other’s experiences in a way that people who aren’t twins wouldn’t get.

A
NDY:
And I think that the bar mitzvah was one of the last great shared experiences we had as a team. Now we’ll get together for birthdays and do some things together when we’re in the same part of the world. But up until thirteen, we really did everything together. It was the Bernstein twins.

After our bar mitzvah is when we started thinking, Well, I don’t want to have a Bernstein twins party. I want to have my own friends and my own party. So that was really the last great hurrah of being a child. And after that and then our father’s death the following year, it was really the beginning of another stage in our lives. I think that the significance of the ceremony, of the bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah ceremony as a symbol, is that it makes that transition visual and tangible for kids and their parents. We recognize that something’s changing there, and the ceremony celebrates that.

J
OSH:
I think there’s more to it. I’m the one who studied mysticism and understood the magic of the words in the Bible. I think that being asked to partake in this tradition that goes back thousands of years across hundreds of generations, and to be able to read from the same scroll and to wear the traditions of Judaism and step into that role, is more than just a practical reading of texts.

There is a spiritual change that happens in someone when they become bar mitzvahed. And just because someone may not have that perspective when they’re twelve or thirteen doesn’t mean they should avoid or ignore it or miss out on it. Because when you’re later inducted into that perspective and you realize, “Wow, tradition does mean a lot. I am part of this—it’s critical.”

That’s why I think Kirk Douglas and people who do or redo this later in life think, Wow! I’m going to do that, That’s why mother said, “I’m going to do that, because I missed out on an aspect of this culture that is transformative, practically as well as spiritually.” There’s meaning there.

She’s an Oscar-winning actress, a mother of four, and for Marlee Matlin, her bat mitzvah was a turning point in her life. Matlin lost her hearing at the age of eighteen months, but that didn’t stop her from doing what she wanted to do. At the age of seven, she was Dorothy in a Chicago children’s theater group’s production of
The Wizard of Oz.
She attended Harper College, where she studied criminal justice, and while there rediscovered her passion for acting. After appearing in a local Chicago production of the Tony Award–winning play
Children of a Lesser God,
she starred in the movie version and won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. This was her first film. With the film
Walker,
which was shot in Nicaragua, Marlee Matlin began visiting hearing and nonhearing children in communities worldwide.

Her academic work in criminal justice came in handy for her work in the 1991 television series
Reasonable Doubts,
in which she played an assistant district attorney. She was an Emmy Award nominee for her work on
Picket Fences, Seinfeld, The Practice
and
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Most recently, she played Marlee the Librarian in
Blues Clues,
Nickelodeon’s Emmy Award–winning show and starred for seven years on the award-winning
The West Wing.

Matlin’s first novel for children,
Deaf Child Crossing,
is loosely based on her own childhood in Chicago, and it inspired two more novels published by Simon & Schuster. In a key real-life role, she helped get a law passed forcing television manufacturers to place a chip enabling closed-captioning for the hearing impaired on all television screens larger than thirteen inches. She continued her work in this area, serving as the national spokesperson for the biggest closed-captioning provider. Giving back to the community is Marlee Matlin’s passion. She is a national celebrity spokesperson for the American Red Cross and serves on the boards of Easter Seals and the Children Affected by Aids Foundation. In addition to her hard work and dedication, she also has a wonderful sense of humor and particularly enjoys reading lips “when the words are bleeped out on television.”

Marlee Matlin is married to Kevin Grandalski and has four children—Sarah, Brandon, Tyler and Isabelle.

TEARS OF JOY THAT WILL LEAVE THEIR MARK FOREVER

When the doctors realized I was deaf and said to my parents, when I was eighteen months old, that I should be sent to an institution hundreds of miles away from home, my parents said, “No, we want Marlee to be with us. It’s about family and it’s about saying I love you every night and we don’t want to send her away.” That was important to them because that’s what a Jewish household is all about. It’s about family. And there’s also an aspect of Judaism that says, “You know what? We don’t necessarily want to do it your way. We want to do it our way.” When it came to my being bat mitzvahed at thirteen, most people would have questioned the decision to go ahead. My parents found a temple in Chicago, Temple Bene Shalom, that had a congregation that included both hearing and deaf people. The rabbi there, Rabbi Douglas Goldhammer, could sign. It was pretty unusual, to see a girl who was deaf being bat mitzvahed. I was able to do it because my parents had that “We don’t care what people think. Let’s just do it” attitude.

And that’s the kind of thing I passed along to my children, that sense of independence, a sense of “Okay, so it may take you forty years to get to Israel, but at least you get there.” So it may be a little bit more difficult to raise a child who happens to be hearing impaired, but you get it done. And I’m always fortunate and thankful every day.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, YOUR BAT MITZVAH WAS CHALLENGING FOR YOU.

Yes, learning Hebrew was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. I didn’t have the benefit of hearing myself say the words. So I had to phonetically learn how to pronounce them. At the ceremony I was saying my haftarah and I was pronouncing the words. I may not have gotten the tune right because obviously, being deaf, you can’t hear the music. But I could hear the words in my head. I learned to pronounce the words. And when I looked up from my haftarah as I was reading, I saw my parents crying. I thought, Oh my gosh, I’m doing something wrong, and I started to cry. I found out later that they weren’t crying, of course, because I was doing something wrong. They were crying out of happiness. And so I finished, and I was so happy that I had gotten through it while everybody was crying.

Then I looked down and I realized that I had cried on the Torah parchment. There were tears on the Torah parchment. I was mortified. And the rabbi said afterward, “Marlee, you know, your tears are a mitzvah.” And I couldn’t figure that out. He said, “Because most times in Jewish history when we think about bad things that have happened, they’re always accompanied by tears. In this case, we have a Torah with your tearstains, but they represent this wonderful event that happened in the community, which is your becoming a part of the Jewish community. And you are a bat mitzvah. And how wonderful that we have these tearstains to remind us of the wonderful thing that you’ve done.” What Rabbi Goldhammer said to me always stuck with me.

YOUR BAT MITZVAH SERVICE WAS SO EMOTIONAL AND TOUCHING. I WOULD IMAGINE YOUR FRIENDS WERE VERY SUPPORTIVE OF YOU.

I had a lot of friends there. Half my friends there were deaf and half were hearing. I was thirteen years old, but I had been an actress since I was seven, and it was almost like being on stage. I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to make sure I got everything right. We had a nice ceremony. My parents were there and my family was there and my friends were there. But I didn’t have a boyfriend until I was fifteen.

My best friend, Liz Tannebaum, who was also deaf, was there. We actually met in Sunday school. I was five and she was six. And I said, “I’ll be your best friend,” and she said, “I’ll be your best friend.” And we celebrated my bat mitzvah together. She was always there for me. And it was a wonderful experience to have her there with me, and it was important for me to have that best friend there by my side supporting me the whole way.

A bar or bat mitzvah is about a couple of things. First, it’s about developing discipline. You have to go every week to Hebrew school and study your Hebrew. Secondly, it’s about appreciation of who you are and your roots. A bat or bar mitzvah is important because it gives children a sense of community and a sense of belonging, which I think is a big thing that’s lacking these days in children. My husband is a police officer. And we always talk about why there are so many kids in gangs these days and what are the causes of this behavior. Personally, I think the behavior results from kids feeling like they have no place to go or a place to belong. I think all kids just feel a need to be part of something, whether it’s a family or church, a temple or a school.

Plus you get lots of nice gifts! It is just a wonderful thing for a kid to go through. It’s a coming of age, a rite of passage. I can’t imagine any other activity at thirteen that’s more fun. It’s a great way to teach your children about community and social responsibility.

SO MANY OF THE PEOPLE I INTERVIEWED FOR THIS BOOK HAD A TOUGH TIME WITH HEBREW. HENRY WINKLER STRUGGLED WITH DYSLEXIA, BUT YOU HAD TO LEARN HEBREW WITHOUT BEING ABLE TO HEAR IT.

You know, Henry is one of the greatest influences in my life. When I was twelve, I was performing in Chicago at a benefit. Henry Winkler was there and I went right up to him and I said, “Hi, I’m Marlee and I want to be your best friend and I want to be an actor in Hollywood just like you.”

And someone pulled Henry aside and said, “You better not encourage her too much because, you know, at the end of the day she’s not going to really be able to get a chance to work in Hollywood. And you wouldn’t want to disappoint a young girl, would you?” And Henry sort of nodded his head.

Then he turned around and he kneeled down and he said to me, “You know, Marlee, sweetheart, you can do whatever you want to do. What people are telling me to tell you is the same thing that people told me. And I only got to where I was because I followed my heart. The only way you can get to where you are is to follow your heart and not let people say that you can’t. Just do what you think you can do.” Nine years after that, when I won the Oscar, I went to his house and showed him the Oscar and said, “Look what I got, Henry.”

The day after I won the Oscar, Rex Reed wrote in the newspaper that I won out of pity and that I didn’t deserve an Oscar because I didn’t say a word. And that I would never work in Hollywood again because I’m deaf. I said, “Henry, what do I do?” And Henry said, “Marlee, the same advice applies now as it did when you were twelve. Don’t pay attention to anybody. Just follow your heart and do whatever you want. Your dreams will come true. Come and stay with us for the weekend and we’ll help sort it out for you.” And so I stayed in Henry and Stacey Winkler’s guesthouse. And interestingly, that weekend turned into a week and then it turned into a month. I ended up living at the Winkler house for two years. I became their unofficial fourth child. Stacey Winkler taught me how to make a wonderful brisket. Henry was great because he would screen all my dates. He would be there at the door with his little checklist making sure that all my dates were appropriate. I ended up getting married on the front lawn of his house.

AND YOU ALSO GREW UP TO BE INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL, NOT TO MENTION AN OSCAR-WINNER. YOU MUST FEEL TERRIBLY BLESSED.

I learned from that newspaper experience I had that you can’t get complacent. People are still going to have preconceived notions about you. Now, if somebody says, “Marlee, you’re great, you’ve broken down barriers,” I say, “No, I haven’t broken down barriers. I’ve just learned to walk around them and keep walking in a straight line. Breaking down barriers is for, you know, politicians, and about fighters. I don’t consider myself a fighter so much as I am just somebody who wants and deserves respect just like anybody else.