Bonus Issue
I want to share a celebration! The meaningful Bar Mitzvah service I ran for James Franco got a glowing write up in the Jewish Journal.
This experience got me thinking about a lot of things. (One of which is that I have been thinking about celebrity and how come some people get picked up by various media. Like, why in the interview did I mention only these five Religion-Outside-The-Box members:
- Max & Elizabeth (who are sailing)
- Philip (the priest from Malta)
- James & Ben (recently wed in Palm Springs)?
Even without the article explicitly mentioning you by name, I hope you can be excited. The good work of nourishing spiritual hunger is both being done well and reported on well.
With love,
Rabbi Brian
Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer has helped plenty of students prepare for bar or bat mitzvah ceremonies, and, in some ways, the one he officiated on Oct. 3 was no different. It involved months of serious study, a special bar mitzvah speech and even a mitzvah project.
“It was like any other bar mitzvah — except not,” the Portland-based rabbi said in a phone interview with the Journal.
The “not” is because the bar mitzvah boy in question was 37-year-old actor James Franco (“127 Hours,” “The Interview,” “Pineapple Express,” “Freaks & Geeks”).
