The headline on the Times of Israel article reads ‘Friends’ son stars in mall bar mitzvah.
The article goes on to tell how Julian, Lisa Kudrow's son, was "bar mitzvahed" in a shopping mall.
The article was based on an interview Kudrow, who is Jewish, had with Conan O'Brien.
I'm glad the boy, now 16, had a belated "semi-formal" bar mitzvah, but I am disappointed that the lad didn't know enough about Judaism to know he was automatically bar mitzvah at age 13-and-a-day when he performed his first mitzvah - maybe he honored his parents, that's always a good way to start a day.
I'm glad there was someone to ask the boy if he was Jewish.
I'm even happier (gladder?) that the boy acknowledged his Jewishness, apparently without reservation.
Finally, I delighted that the "someone" - probably a Chabadnik - helped Julian don a kippa and put on tefillin.
While I'm not unhappy that Kudrow and O'Brien turned the event into a comedy routine, with Kudrow calling it a "drive-by bar mitzvah" as if a gang of black hats swooped down on her unsuspecting son, I am unhappy that bar mitzvah apparently has become a verb.
When I knew even less Hebrew than I do now, I once argued that a telephone should be called a סך רחוך, the precise translation of the Greek "telephone."
Hebrew is a verb-based language and my Israeli-born and educated co-worker asked me if the telephone was called, as my dictionary claimed, סך רחוך, how could I make a verb from that? Sak Rahaktee? Saktee Rahak? I was disabused of the term סך רחוך for reference to telephones. For those who insist on knowing how the noun "telephone" can be "verbed," consider טלפנתי (I telephoned).
Bar mitzvah means "son of the commandment" (just one; if it were more the correct term for the occasion would be "bar mitzvot" indicating to my Edward Bear mind that performing a single mitzvah is enough to earn the title "son of" a mitzvah - again, honoring parents is a good mitzvah to perform.
Julian is a bar mitzvah, he was, since he was 13 years old and a day, a bar mitzvah, but Julian never was "bar mitzvahed."
I'm glad he was introduced, albeit at a late date, to tefillin (too bad he didn't don a tallit, but perhaps, unlike Sefardim, Chabad reserves the tallit until the boy - sorry, young man - stands under the huppa), but perhaps the tefillin's first impression will, in the end, be a lasting one and Julian soon will receive his own tefillin (and maybe a mezuzah for his door).
Good for Julian.
Good for the (probably) Chabadnik who introduced Julian to tefillin.
Good for Lisa Kudrow for not, as some Hollywood Jews might do, criticize her son for admitting he's a Jew.
There is hope.
