Comedian, actor, writer, and director Carl Reiner died last week at the age of 98. Reiner was a pioneer in television as a writer and performer on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour. He created one of the best sitcoms in television history, The Dick Van Dyke Show. He performed in films including It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming. He wrote and/or directed movies such as The Jerk, Oh, God!, and Where’s Poppa. He starred on Broadway, and he voiced characters in animated films including Toy Story 4. And he partnered with his best friend Mel Brooks to perform The 2000 Year Old Man and other comedic routines on records and TV. Reiner grew up in the Bronx, the son of Jewish immigrants. While proudly Jewish, he said he became an atheist after the Holocaust. How did Reiner describe his bar mitzvah?
A. Reiner did not make a bar mitzvah until he was an adult. In a 1968 interview in TV Guide he said, “My father was a watchmaker. My mother was a seamstress. They worked all the time, and didn’t have time or money for a synagogue. When my son Rob was preparing for his bar mitzvah he asked me about mine. I told him I never had a bar mitzvah, and he said I should have one. I didn’t do anything at that time, after all, it was his moment. But a few years later I decided it’s my turn. I didn’t tell anyone about it except Estelle [Reiner’s wife] until a week before the service.” His experience inspired the episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show when Dick and Sally thought Buddy might be having an affair, but it turned out he was secretly studying for his bar mitzvah.
B. Reiner noted that he had “a bootleg bar mitzvah.” While his friends (Lenny, Shlermy, David, Marty and Mutty) all went to Hebrew School for many years, he only began bar mitzvah lessons a few months before his 13th birthday, when his father hired a rabbi to teach him. As Reiner wrote in his autobiography, I Remember Me, “All I can remember about the rabbi was his long, white beard, his healthy paunch, and the dirty toothpick he took from his vest pocket at the start of each lesson. He used the weathered toothpick to pick his teeth and to point to letters and words in the prayer book.”
C. Reiner described his bar mitzvah in his 2004 book, My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir. “I didn’t grow up in a religious home. Like any 12 year old, I didn’t really know what being Jewish meant, except that we ate salami and knishes, and some of the other kids in the neighborhood disappeared on Saturday. But we joined a little shul, really a shtiebel, that met in our apartment building, and the rabbi was a nice guy, with a real twinkle in his eye. He taught me some prayers, I went to shul with my family, sang the prayers, and then had my first sip of schnapps. It’s a nice memory. And that rabbi, that’s who I had in mind when I cast George Burns as God in Oh, God!”
D. Reiner spoke about his bar mitzvah in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1996. “It wasn't a big deal,” he said. “I studied with this old rabbi at the shul in our neighborhood in the Bronx. He was ancient, he had this accent that I could barely understand. He kept telling me stories about how Jews walked through the desert 2000 years ago. I just wanted to get outside and play Ringoleavio or stickball. But I owe a lot to that rabbi. He was the inspiration for Mel’s 2000 year old man. That paid a lot of bills for me.”
E. Said Reiner in a 1992 People Magazine article, “I wasn't really interested in a bar mitzvah. But I did go to Hebrew School, and I remember the rabbi saying that I had to decide what prayers I wanted to lead. I had no idea, and no interest. I played like the prayers meant something, but I was just faking it. But then one day I heard this really cute girl in class named Sally sing some prayer. It was amazing. I had never heard anything like it. She was definitely not faking it. I went right to the rabbi and said, ‘I'll daven what she’s davening.’ ”