In The Chosen Image: Television’s Portrayal of Jewish Themes and Characters (1999), Jonathan and Judith Pearl argue that, although Hollywood movies tend to depict the bar and bat mitzvah as trivial or materialistic (the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, The Wedding Singer, the Ben Stiller role in Starsky & Hutch), television has taken a far more nuanced approach: “Often great pains are taken to explain the meaning of the ceremony, its importance to the family, and its significance in Jewish life.” They’re right, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. For the first, say, 30 years of television, it was a far more cautious medium than the cinema. It either didn’t treat the religious aspect of people’s lives (there were no b’nai mitzvah on, say, The Goldbergs), or it treated religion with an earnestness that would make us squirm today. By the 1980s, it was acceptable to poke gentle fun at a rite like the bar mitzvah. And in the 1990s, when television shows like The Simpsons and South Park were fearlessly lampooning and satirizing everything, nothing was sacred, not even religious practices.
Theodore Bikel, Cloris Leachman, and Ernest Borgnine in The Bar Mitzvah of Major Orlovsky (CBS/Photofest)
Here, then, are 10 memorable TV b’nai mitzvah, moving over the years from well-meaning, almost saccharine reverence for ritual to critical, even scathing send-ups.