Six years ago, Rabbi Marc Rubenstein had just finished officiating at a wedding in Calabasas, California, when he spotted one of his showbiz heroines. Diane Keaton was clad in an Annie-Hall style hat, sitting by herself, a little lost.
“I went over and introduced myself,” says the 69 year-old. “We had a couple of glasses of red wine and within minutes we were firm friends. My wife, Margery, loves Diane, so I asked for an autograph. She signed it: ‘Dear Margery, your husband is the BEST’.
"Some time later, I heard that she’d told a mutual friend that she would never forget me.”
Meet Marc Rubenstein, the self-styled “Rabbi to the Stars”. Born to Conservative parents in New York, he started as a rabbi in Brooklyn Heights, before moving to the West Coast in the early ’80s. His family first settled in the northern Californian wine region, then Hollywood — “everybody’s dream”.
Within months, he found himself ministering to the rich and famous. “God has led me to famous people,” says Rabbi Marc.
His first celebrity gig happened by accident, in 1981. “A friend was meant to be doing a wedding but he was ill and the couple needed a substitute,” he says.
“I stepped in to ‘pinch hit’ as the ceremony was close to my synagogue. It was at Sterling Vineyard in Napa, a real production, with a gondola, and everything. As I turned up, I recognised Neil Diamond and Rod Stewart among the guests”.
It turned out that the groom was Neil Diamond’s manager. “I was taken aback but the nerves didn’t last and think I made a pretty good job of it. At least that’s what people said when they came up to me afterwards. I apologised to Neil Diamond that I wasn’t a good singer, but he was very complimentary.”
On the strength of Rabbi Marc’s performance, bookings followed among the celebrity set. In 1989, he performed a barmitzvah for the son of Whoopi Goldberg’s boyfriend. “My main memory of that is her huge laugh,” he says.
Before long, Marc decided to actively market himself as “Rabbi to the Stars” (“a friend suggested it”) before moving in 1990 to Newport Beach, a starry neighbourhood of Los Angeles. “My wife’s father was the TV executive Hal Golden — he brought us Little House On The Prairie and Love Boat,” says Rabbi Marc. “So I felt at home in that world.”
New friends included talk-show host Jay Leno (“he recognised my face from his comedy club, so I did a wedding for his manager in Burbank in 2012 — I sat at his table”.)
Names keep dropping: actress Juliette Lewis, who performed with her band at the wedding of Donovan Leitch, son of the British ’60s singer Donovan. Shirley Maclaine in the lobby of the Beverly Hilton: “Are you Shirley Maclaine?” “Damn right I am!”. Robin Williams, who apparently was short, at 5’6.
There was a nervous moment with Sylvester Stallone’s 99-year-old mother, Jackie. “We were having dinner together on a boat,” he says. “I was worried if anything happened to her, Sly would come for me.”
According to Rabbi Marc, celebrities are down-to-earth, “just like you and me”. The only real disappointment was Dustin Hoffman. The legendary actor had agreed to come and speak to the Newport Beach congregants.
But when Dustin called to finalise arrangements, Rabbi Marc was on another call, so the shul secretary put him on hold. Dustin hung up. “He didn’t come,” says Rabbi Marc, sadly.
In 2002, Marc approached Disneyland and asked: “Do you have a rabbi?” Turns out they didn’t. So for the next three years, he “unofficially” offered his services, performing weddings and barmitzvahs in the theme park.
“It costs a lot of money to get married in Disneyland,” he says. “Fifty thousand dollars back then, close to 100,000 now. The bride comes out of Cinderella’s carriage, and the prince from Tangled loses the rings”.
But despite the gaudy spectacle of a Disney wedding, Rabbi Marc is serious about the ceremony. “It has to be meaningful, and it has to be spiritual and respectful to God. I wouldn’t let the barmitzvah boys wear Mouseketeer ears, for example.”
Beneath the showbizzy exterior, Rabbi Marc takes his religion seriously. “To me, being Jewish means four things,” he says. “It’s about being kind; telling the truth; respecting others; and never disliking others on account of their beliefs, or the colour of their skin.”
He is also a novelist. His roman à clef is Weddings By The Glass, a story about an interfaith couple. Here’s the synopsis: “Hillie Gordon is a smart, successful (non-Jewish) woman who had promised her mother she would have a deeply spiritual wedding ceremony. Jay Jaworski, her fiancé, is a busy eye surgeon, who just wants to have a simple wedding service, while keeping his Jewish parents happy.”
The rabbi is proud of his achievement. “No novel like this has ever been written.” The reviewer at Publishers Weekly is more even-handed. “The book’s message is diluted by lists of what a wedding planner does and the information about venues featured in the story, but Rabbi Glassman’s warmth and blend of modern and traditional wisdom are clear.”
Determined to involve his entire congregation, he has also written a children’s book called Oni and the Kingdom of the Onion about how the ingredients in a salad work well together to create the perfect meal. “Jews are the social conscience of the world,” he says.
“I’m not the first person to say this, but my own take is that Judaism is not a religion of faith, but a religion of action. All rabbis agree on the tenets of the Torah, but not on the observance of ritual.”
Describing himself as “somewhere between Conservative and Reform”, Rabbi Marc doesn’t think Jews need to be members of a congregation to practise their religion. (Forty per cent of American Jews are without a shul membership, he says, and 60 per cent “marry out.”)
“I want to take Judaism to people, rather than wait for them to come to me,” he says. So he helps those who wish to convert. Potential converts have a combination of internet study, phone calls, face-to-face meetings, private reading and visits —if possible — to a local synagogue.
Through his website, he has performed 484 online conversions, and has 13,495 subscribers. The average conversion takes a year-and-a-half and at the end of the course you receive an “Acceptance Into The Jewish Faith” certificate.
Becoming Jewish this way doesn’t come cheap: $800 for a Reform qualification, $1,250 for a Conservative. “The extra cost is for the Beth Din of three rabbis and the mikveh which are not required in a Reform conversion,” he explains.
Of his former students, Rabbi Marc is particularly close to Weston Cage Coppola, son of actor Nicolas Cage, and great-nephew of Godfather director Frances Ford Coppola.
“Weston converted with me and I performed his wedding in spring last year,” he says. “More recently, he had had some spiritual questions from his kabbalah study. I was delighted to help him.”
Then there is the wine. For three years now, Rabbi Marc has been co-producing Hesperus Grenache, Zephyrus Zinfandel and Erato Cabernet Franc, among others, working in association with Gershon Bacchus Vintners in southern California. The business makes 22,000 bottles a year.
But there is a caveat. “For wine to be considered kosher it has to be make by Jews, with kosher ingredients, never on Shabbat,” he says. “We can do all that, but one thing we can’t ensure is that during the manufacturing process, the water is poured by someone wearing tefillin. So we call it ‘kosher-style’ wine.”
(I mentioned this endeavour in passing to a rabbi acquaintance of mine who told me “there is no such thing as kosher-style wine. Either it is kashrut, or it isn’t.”)
In between his pastoral duties, writing, teaching and viticulture Rabbi Marc spends time with his three adult sons and two granddaughters. He is in demand as a public speaker, and enjoys golf and sailing.
He shows no signs of slowing down.
“I have more years behind me than are in front of me,” he says. “Why should I retire? I have led a charmed life. God has been very good to me”.
