Tiffany Haddish rang in her 40th birthday with a very, very special celebration: a “Black Mitzvah.” Mazel tov, Tiffany! Today you are a woman.
As Variety reports, on Tuesday night Haddish threw an extravagant, star-studded bat mitzvah party for herself–“Black Mitzvah” also happens to be the name and theme of the star’s new Netflix comedy special. At 27, the comedian found out that her father, born in Eritrea, was an Eritrean Jew. And in the intervening years she’s dedicated herself to learning more about the religion (although considering the fact that she’s a native Los Angeleno who works in comedy, we doubt she had a lot to catch up on), culminating in Tuesday’s bat mitzvah ceremony. And she was given one particularly amazing gift–friend Barbra Streisand couldn’t attend the party, but she made sure to send Haddish a lovely Star of David pendant. Very Uncut Gems.
Haddish held her party at the ballroom of the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, a location fit for a Jewish American Princess. She wore a custom dress by Walter Collection (styled by Law Roach), and entered the event while dancing to the Hava Nagila. Guests danced the Hora, lifting Haddish up in a chair, and she handed out custom embroidered yarmulkes. Attendees included the likes of Wanda Sykes, Jimmy Kimmel, Chelsea Handler, Charlamagne tha God, and JB Smoove, and comedians Billy Crystal, Kevin Nealon and Sarah Silverman attended the private bat mitzvah. Silverman’s sister Susan, a rabbi, performed the ceremony. Haddish, like at the 2018 Oscars, wore traditional Eritrean attire in honor of her father.
“It’s very special because as black people, when we were brought here to America, a lot of our heritage was stripped from us,” Haddish told Variety. “Being able to do my DNA test and find out who I really am, I feel like it’s very important to share that with the world, so we can all start digging and find out who we are and start having some honor and pride in ourselves. It will help everybody because you start to realize we are all the same. We are not that different.”
“[The bat mitzvah] was unlike anything I’ve seen before,” added Nealon, who also referred to the ceremony as "very moving" and "grounded."
“I’ve been at bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs," he said. "[But] I saw in her face so much love coming from her and so much gratefulness for everything that she’s gotten in her life now.”
Originally Appeared on W
