Nowadays, the idea of movie megastar Paul Rudd holding court at your bat or bat mitzvah party sounds like a fever dream.
Yet, for a group of very lucky Jewish kids in California in the late 80s and early 90s, it was a reality.
You see, when Rudd was working hard to make it as an actor, he, like any acting upstart in Hollywood, had to pay the bills. And he did that by emceeing and DJ-ing celebrations of the Jewish rite of passage.
A 2010 video of one of these parties, from (Kveller guest editor) Gabi Birkner, went viral back in the day, showing Rudd with a canary yellow blazer (that was later referenced in an episode of “Only Murders in the Building”). And this year, decades after her bat mitzvah, Gabi finally got to “reunite” with Paul Rudd on “The Drew Barrymore Show” via video.
It all happened on a Dec. 22 episode of the talk show, which featured Rudd and his (Jewish!) “Anaconda” co-star Jack Black — who wore matching tie-dye shirts that would not embarrass any bar mitzvah kid. (Can we get Rudd and Black on the b’nai mitzvah circuit, please?!).
After chatting about their new film, Barrymore told Rudd about her daughter Olive’s bat mitzvah — to which Rudd and Black both replied with a hearty “mazel tov.” She then told Rudd she was surprised to discover that he was a bat mitzvah DJ.
“Yeah, I was,” Rudd shared proudly, “And not just bat/bar, and by the way, even a couple of b’nais,” which he then explained were joint parties for boys and girls reaching the Jewish milestone, as the video of Gabi’s bat mitzvah was played on the screen behind them.
Barrymore then told Rudd she had a surprise for him — a video from Gabi herself.
“Hi Paul, it’s Gabi, the girl whose bat mitzvah you DJ’ed way back in 1992,” Gabi shared in the video, “I remember that you were charming and that you were menschy and that you played a mean air guitar. Maybe you let me cheat a little bit at the limbo. Thanks for everything.”
Rudd seemed genuinely moved (or should we say, verklempt?!) by Gabi’s video —”Oh Gabi, I’m so touched,” he said sweetly, and added that limbo and air guitar were a bar, bat, b’nai must at the time.
“I love that those are your attributes. She’s like, I remember you did the best air guitar and you helped me with limbo,” Barrymore joked.
Rudd was indeed very successful as a bar, bat and b’nai mitzvah emcee (he even once invited his friends Jon Hamm and Joe Buck to hang out at one said event). While he seems to have nothing but fond memories of Gabi’s party, he was a bit ambivalent about the job as a whole.
In 2015, he told Howard Stern that the gig (which he felt very fortunate to have!) sometimes made him feel like a douche, especially when clients requested that he do the “Dork Dance” (that name definitely hasn’t aged well) as “Donnie Dweeb,” a character he unwittingly invented while dancing deliriously after 18 hours non-stop b’nai mitzvah-ing. (Donnie Dweeb indeed made an appearance at Gabi’s bat mitzvah.)
Still, it’s safe to say, Rudd made many a teen’s bar and bat mitzvah very memorable. And for Gabi, finally getting to thank her bar mitzvah DJ was quite meaningful. “I wanted to let people know that he really is the mensch everyone imagines him to be. My bat mitzvah video has been everywhere over the past 15 years, but this was my chance, finally, to say thank you for helping to make that day so special,” she told Kveller.
Just when we thought Paul Rudd couldn’t be more of a mensch, he surprises us with another sweet Jewish TV moment. As the actor once said — “I’m not a practicing Jew… I perfected it.”
We couldn’t agree more.
