Hammer to Celebrate Bar Mitzvah at 92

Mazel tov, Armand Hammer.

The 92-year-old billionaire industrialist will be pronounced a man next month when he celebrates his bar mitzvah, 79 years late, in a swank ceremony studded with Hollywood celebrities.

The ceremony, signaling the entry of a Jewish male into manhood at age 13, is anticipated as officials at his Occidental Petroleum are making the most cautious of statements about the philanthropist’s health.

Hammer didn’t appear last week at a press preview of the $96-million Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Culture, which houses his personal art collection.

Associates said he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to save his strength for a dinner party at the museum Sunday night. Hammer attended the Sunday night bash, his personal physician sitting one seat away. He didn’t address the crowd.

This will not be an orthodox bar mitzvah.

The ceremony is traditionally held on a Saturday morning at a synagogue. But Hammer’s bar mitzvah will be on a Tuesday night, Dec. 11, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and will benefit two Jewish institutions--the Pacific Jewish Center in Los Angeles and the Jerusalem College of Technology.

Ted Turner is the honorary chairman and Elliot Gould the emcee, and the black-tie crowd will include Merv Griffin, Lee Iacocca, Bob Hope and Gov.-elect Pete Wilson.

The unusual has been customary for Hammer, a physician, philanthropist, art collector, peace crusader and titan of capitalism who’s known every Soviet leader since V. I. Lenin.

Jewish religious observances were dispensed with during Hammer’s childhood. In his 1987 autobiography, Hammer described his father as a socialist humanist.

“It is never too late,” said Meyer Denn, executive director of the Pacific Jewish Center.

With concern rising about Hammer’s health, Denn and Occidental spokesman Frank Ashley said the benefit had been planned for months, and they warned against reading too much into it.

“I think it’s just Dr. Hammer standing up and saying, ‘I’m proud to be a Jew.’ I think it will be a very emotional thing for him,” Denn said.

Hammer designated Occidental President Ray Irani as his successor early this year, largely in an attempt to temper the swings in stock price that occur at the merest rumor of illness.