Hollywood actor David Arquette had a Bar Mitvah ceremony at age 41, at Jerusalem's Western Wall.
According to a statement released by the office of Western Wall Rabbi, Shmuel Rabinovitch, Arquette was to have attended a bar mitzvah ceremony at the wall for an Israeli youth, when it was disclosed that the Jewish actor never celebrated his own rite of passage.
“Is too late to have one?” Arquette reportedly asked his hosts.
“Better late than never,” he was told.
At a Monday morning religious service at the Wall, when the Torah is traditionally read and where scores of bar mitzvahs are celebrated, Rabinovitch strapped the tefillin, or phylacteries, to Arquette’s tattooed left arm and placed the traditional strapped leather black box over his head. Arquette donned a traditional prayer shawl, or tallis, before being called to the Torah for his first ever “aliyah.” More than 10 photos of Arquette at the Wall were released by Rabinovitch’s office.
“I was here on Sabbath eve, and I felt in these moments as though I am continuing a chain of proud generations of which I am a part,” Arquette was quoted as telling Rabinovitch in the statement which could not be independently verified. “The prayer here, and the energies of the worshipers, instilled me with a special inspiration. To my regret, I never studied the Torah; I haven’t any basic knowledge of it, and I feel a great void. Though I celebrated Hanukkah and learned a bit at Sunday school, this doesn’t even amount to minimal knowledge.”
Arquette, the ex-husband of actress Courtney Cox, arrived in Israel over the weekend to shoot an episode of the television travel show, “Trippin.”
According to the statement, Arquette’s Jewish mother renounced her Jewish faith, and his father was a convert to Islam.
