Mazel Tov: Celebrities' Bar and Bat Mitzvah Memories (9 page)

Henry passed on a chance to labor in the lumber business. If acting didn’t work out, his plans were to become a child psychologist. Lucky for us it did, and as a result, “The Fonz” will live on forever.

Henry Winkler was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Little did anyone know at the time, but Henry was dyslexic. He struggled through school but eventually overcame his learning disability, and then some.

Henry Winkler graduated from Emerson College in 1967 and received his Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama in 1970. Then, in 1978, he earned a PhD in Hebrew Literature from Emerson College.

His interest in acting had developed early, around the time he won the leading role in his school play,
Billy Budd,
when he was in the eighth grade. After Yale, he found work in commercials, and in 1974, he got his first major film role in
The Lords of Flatbush.
Also in 1974, when Henry Winkler was twenty-seven years old, he became Arthur “Fonzie” (“The Fonz”) Fonzarelli in the television series
Happy Days,
on ABC. The character became an icon, the epitome of cool, and won his way into households across the country. Ratings zoomed sky-high thanks to Fonzie’s popularity. But Winkler is also famous for remaining levelheaded during his rise to celebrity.

After ten years,
Happy Days
was canceled and Henry Winkler went on to producing and directing a multitude of projects. He also appeared in films:
Night Shift, Scream, The Waterboy,
and
Holes.
Winkler found roles in television episodes of
The Practice, Crossing Jordan,
and
Arrested Development
and starred in
Out of Practice.
In
Happy Days: 30th Anniversary Reunion
(2005), he had two roles, one off screen as executive producer and the other as The Fonz. His performance in the PBS children’s animated series
Clifford’s Puppy Days
earned him the 2004–2005 Daytime Emmy Award. Broadway audiences were lucky to watch him in
The Dinner Party,
a Neil Simon play.

Using his experience with dyslexia as a theme, Henry Winkler has coauthored a children’s book series with Lin Oliver called
Hank Zipzer: The World’s Best Underachiever.

Henry Winkler and his wife, Stacey, are involved with several charities. They founded the Children’s Action Network, which gives free immunizations to more than 200,000 children. Other organizations benefiting from the Winkler’s devotion to helping others are the MacLaren Children’s Center, the National Committee for Arts for the Handicapped, the Los Angeles Music Center’s Very Special Arts Festival, and the Special Olympics.

Henry and Stacey Winkler have three children.

THIRTEEN WAS
AAAAYYYY
GREAT YEAR

I had my bar mitzvah on November 8, 1958, at Congregation Habonim on West 66th Street between Central Park West and Broadway in Manhattan. It was our neighborhood synagogue and not far from where we lived at 78th and Broadway.

It’s no coincidence that the character that I write about in my books lives in my old building, goes to P.S.87, which is down the street, and has learning challenges just like I did. I’m dyslexic, which is a real problem when you’re trying to read and a huge problem when you’re studying Hebrew. I learned my haftarah phonetically because there was no way I was learning Hebrew. I was having enough trouble reading English from left to right. Reading Hebrew from right to left and dealing with those letters that I couldn’t figure out for all the tea in China was too much for me. It was so difficult because everybody else was reading from the prayer book and the Torah. And I was struggling. I had to memorize it like I was playing a part. Not much was known about dyslexia at the time so I was labeled lazy and inattentive. It was confusing to me because I knew I was smart, but for some reason I didn’t understand the reading.

CONSIDERING YOU HAVE DYSLEXIA, I WOULD IMAGINE LEARNING THE HEBREW PORTION MUST HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT FOR YOU.

I was a nervous wreck. At the service, you have to read your haftarah portion in Hebrew and then you have to read the story in English. This was really hard for me. The words would just swim around on the page. In fact, I did not actually read a novel until the eleventh or twelfth grade in high school. My bar mitzvah was a real milestone for me because I was tackling the ultimate challenge. What I remember is that I got mixed up. I did the second prayer first. So I just had to stop and start again. The rabbi looked at me. I looked at him and I just went, “Well, what can I do?” And I went back and started again.

I was definitely not comfortable being in front of a crowd. Now, I speak publicly across the country quite comfortably, but when I started, I would be in a panic. In my late twenties I thought that being an actor was like being a brain surgeon. When you’re fifty-five, you finally get it all together. Only now am I relaxing into getting better. It was different for me at thirteen. I didn’t really like it all that much.

At that time, all I thought was, Am I ever going to get through this? The Torah portion was relatively short but I felt like I had been reading from the Torah for about a month and a half. It just wouldn’t end. I don’t remember how many people were there or whether the party was good or not, but I do remember the reading part and how tough it was. And I remember that the party was at the Alcott Hotel on West 72nd Street. I remember that I got one of those first Polaroid cameras that folded down and you pulled it all the way out. Then you had to wait sixty seconds, and then you had to peel the picture away from the chemical. I also remember that I could really dance. I did the limbo and a modified Kazatski, the Russian dance where they kick their legs out. I was not a good reader, but I was a good mover.

DID YOU FEEL AT THAT POINT THAT YOU WERE A MAN?

I felt like I barely fit in the suit, but I did have really great loafers. They were square-toed. I always had to wear sensible shoes. My parents escaped from Nazi Germany and were frugal. The soap we used my mother usually took from hotels when we were on vacation. Everything is different today, I know. My bar mitzvah was different from what they are today. Now, there’s too much pressure for the parents to have their child’s celebration measure up, and it must be excruciating for the child when their bar mitzvah is not as extravagant as their friends’. It’s not even healthy, let alone fun.

It’s a five-thousand-year-old tradition. When you stand up there, there is a sense of this continuum that you are aware of even at thirteen. That’s big. However, if you have to have a ship sail across the dance floor to bring in the bar or bat mitzvah boy or girl, do they get the real meaning of the ritual?

My bar mitzvah was an accomplishment. I’m very proud that I went through it. And I’m very proud that I then continued it as a parent with my own children, who, by the way, are all dyslexic. It’s hereditary. But they did a fantastic job, my children. Once I understood that they had my problem, I never again said to my son, “You can’t do your homework with the radio playing,” because I finally realized that the music might be helping him focus.

YOU’RE VERY SIMILAR TO THE CHARACTER WHO MADE YOU FAMOUS, “THE FONZ.” HE HAD SENSITIVITY WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR. DID YOU HAVE THAT SENSE OF HUMOR AT THIRTEEN?

Yes, but I think I did it with timing. I didn’t feel funny although I was a class clown. I was social, a gadfly. I would show up at a school dance or a temple dance and I had to make sure that I talked to every human being in the place, that I had somehow to make the rounds. I couldn’t relax. Some people, especially the girls, found me too intense, to tell you the truth. And not only that, but if I was stupid enough to take a date to one of these dances, she would spend a lot of time by herself because I had to make contact with everybody. It was a compulsion. Interestingly enough, The Fonz was my alter ego. He was everybody I wanted to be but wasn’t. I wasn’t even close to being the cool guy that every girl wanted to be with. I had a lot of braces on my teeth, thanks to Dr. Murray Zimmerman. My mouth was full of metal and rubber bands.

WAS THAT WHY YOU BECAME THE KING OF COOL ON TV? HOW MUCH INPUT DID YOU HAVE IN CREATING THAT MOST MEMORABLE CHARACTER?

A lot. He was a cool guy but there were times when he wasn’t. He would be at home, with his jacket off, and there was no one to be cool for. He was left with himself. There had to be that emotional side to him. My learning disabilities were also a part of The Fonz. He was cool, but he wasn’t the straight-A student.

YOUR PARENTS ARE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS. DID YOUR BAR MITZVAH HAVE MORE MEANING TO YOU BECAUSE OF THAT?

I don’t think so. I think it had an incredible amount of meaning to me because I believe that no matter how much children fight it, there is a sense of extraordinary pride in each child. We just went to a bat mitzvah and the girl, who is usually shy and stays out of the limelight, stood there and she was in charge.

Sometimes, as an adult, you see these children up on the bima and you see a vision of who they will be, taking on this extraordinary responsibility and this extraordinary challenge that they meet. I watched all three of my children up there, my two boys and my one girl. You know who they are at home and you know how fresh they are and how sassy. And all of a sudden you see them taking on the mantle of this responsibility. It’s so touching, I don’t know what to do. There is so much joy in seeing them go through this. And you know what I love? I love that for five thousand years people have tried to destroy the Jewish culture and we’re still here and we’re still relevant. And we’re still contributors to the world everywhere.

Ed Koch, a registered Democrat and a practicing Jew, served as the 105th mayor of New York City for three terms, from 1978 through 1989. In the 1981 election, he ran as both a Democrat and a Republican, endorsed by both parties and proud of his Jewish heritage. His career in New York City politics began in 1963 when he was elected Democratic district leader of Greenwich Village. The “How’m I doing?” former mayor is a native New Yorker and grew up in the Bronx and Newark, New Jersey, where he graduated from South Side High School. He attended City College of New York and graduated from New York University Law School in 1948. Mayor Koch is famous for having kept New York City from going bankrupt in the late 1970s and putting the city on a balanced budget for the first time in fifteen years. He gave the city back its spirit, created two hundred fifty thousand affordable housing units, and put in place a judicial merit system in the selection of Criminal and Family Court judges.

After serving as mayor, Ed Koch joined the law firm of Robinson, Silverman, Pearce, Aronsohn, and Berman LLP, now Bryan Cave LLP, as partner. He is also an author and has written eight political books:
Mayor, Politics, His Eminence and Hizzoner, All the Best, Citizen Koch, Ed Koch on Everything, Guiliani: Nasty Man,
and
I’m Not Done Yet: Remaining Relevant.
He coauthored two children’s books with his sister, Pat Koch Thaler:
Eddie, Harold’s Little Brother
and
Eddie’s Little Sister Makes a Splash.
In addition, two current books to be published are
Buzz
(2007), coauthored by Christy Heady, and
Confronting Anti-Semitism & The Holocaust
(2008), coauthored by Rafael Medoff.

Ed Koch is a political commentator on television and radio and writes a weekly political column, along with movie reviews. The multitasking Ed Koch became a judge on
The People’s Court
for two years on television and an adjunct professor at New York University for several years. He performed in an episode of
Sex and the City,
and appeared in a number of Hollywood films. He is one of the first mayors ever to host
Saturday Night Live.

HOW’M I DOING?
AICH ANI OSE?

My bar mitzvah stands out as a major event in my life. We had the ceremony at the Ohev Sholom Synagogue on High Street in Newark, New Jersey. Having a bar mitzvah is an important milestone, a tradition. You prepare for it at the synagogue. They teach you the section of the Torah that you’re going to read and the section of the haftarah. In those days, you were expected to make a speech thanking your mother and father, which I did. We were low middle class or worse in those days. I didn’t have a catered bar mitzvah. We had the party in our house. I suspect about a hundred people were there, relatives and friends. I remember that my sister, who is now a grandmother, was about five years old at the time. My mother did the cooking. My parents, Joyce Silpe Koch and Louis Koch, were both immigrants coming from Poland in the early 1900s, when Poland was a province of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

YOUR BAR MITZVAH GAVE YOU A FORUM IN WHICH TO SPEAK. WERE YOU ANXIOUS? DID YOU FEEL THEN THAT YOU COULD GROW UP TO BE A GREAT ORATOR?

No, it would be silly to think that only one instance of speaking in front of a crowd is something that would have a special impact on my ability to speak in public forums. Also, I have no doubt that I was anxious. I don’t speak Hebrew now and didn’t back then. I learned it by rote and I know that I wanted to do a good job. I felt the pressure.

And today, I’m a very proud Jew, proud to have been bar mitzvahed, and conscious of the traditions of my religion. I think that the people in New York City know that I was desirous of making clear to people when I was mayor that I was a Jew, treating other Jews no better or no worse than anybody else in this city. I’m proud of my people’s accomplishment historically and in New York and in the United States.

GROWING UP, DID OTHER KIDS YOU KNOW HAVE BAR MITZVAHS?

I would say that everybody in the area of Newark where I grew up was Jewish and all the boys had bar mitzvahs. None of them are around anymore. Some are dead and some moved away from the New York area.

WHAT ABOUT NOW? DO YOU STILL ATTEND BAR MITZVAHS?

In our family, the first bat mitzvah of a granddaughter, my sister’s granddaughter, was held in California about two or three years ago. And we went out there to participate and be with her at the time. It’s lovely to see both the bar mitzvahs and the bat mitzvahs. We’re looking forward to the first bar mitzvah, of Noah, who is my sister’s grandchild and the son of her son, Jon.

YOU TAKE PRIDE IN YOUR RELIGION. WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES AND THE TRADITIONS THAT MAKE YOU MOST PROUD TO BE JEWISH?

I believe that Jews have achieved great success not only in the United States, but throughout the world. But we are and should be particularly grateful to the United States for its openness to the Jewish community and its very small anti-Semitic population. We have a lot to thank the United States for. And I do that every day. I think about it.

On Rosh Hashanah of this year, 5767, I attended services as I have done for the last forty years at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. Since I left the mayoralty some seventeen years ago, Rabbi Arthur Schneier has asked me to speak to the congregation on Rosh Hashanah, marking the beginning of the new year. This year, I focused on the incredible upheaval happening in the world today. I also spoke about Daniel Pearl, the
Wall Street Journal
reporter who was taken hostage by the terrorists in Pakistan. They paraded him on television and forced him to say, “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.” Then they slit his throat and decapitated him with the world watching the video of the murder.

That morning the rabbi told us of the importance of the prayers we recite on Rosh Hashanah and that we should be conscious of their special significance. I hope that someday soon we will add Daniel Pearl’s words to a special prayer. “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”

My speech was well received by the synagogue. In fact, they applauded, which is very unusual in a synagogue.