Yiddishe Mamas (19 page)

Throughout his career, Irving Berlin composed on the piano in only one key: F sharp. Later, he had a special piano built with a lever to transpose into any key he wanted while he continued to play only on the black keys. In addition to “God Bless America” and other legendary songs, the master also wrote a number of songs for “mama,” including: “Next to Your Mother, Who Do You Love?,” “Run Home and Tell Your Mother,” “You’ve Got Your Mother’s Big Blue Eyes!,” and “If the Managers Only Thought the Same As Mother.” Not bad for a poor Jewish immigrant who never learned to read or write music!

The phrase “God Bless America” was taken from Berlin’s mother. While he was growing up on the Lower East Side, she would say “God bless America” often to indicate that without America, her rather large family would have had no place to go.

“My mother’s love for me was so great I have worked hard to justify it,” said artist Marc Chagall about his mother, Feija-Ida Chagall. Chagall’s parents, cousins, were natives of Liozno, a village not far from Vitebsk, Russia (now in Belarus). Mrs. Chagall ran a shop, took care of the
house, supervised his father, started their grocery trade, and got a whole wagon of goods on credit. The shop was so profitable, the Chagalls were able to raise eight children and build four houses. “Her life was hard and her hairs got gray very early. Her eyes were often full of tears,” wrote her son. “All my talent was hidden in my mother and everything from her … was transferred to me.”

Oscar Goodman (D-NV), the tell-it-like-it-is flamboyant mayor of Las Vegas, once known as the mob lawyer for defending crime figures such as Meyer Lansky and Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilatro, has enjoyed immense notoriety nationwide. He appeared in the film
Casino,
was the subject of a book,
Of Rats and Men,
and, in 2005, was a guest photographer for
Playboy.
Yet when it comes to his mother, his eyes well as he remembers the woman who died in 2004, “She was perfect.”

Laura Goodman, a talented artist who studied with some of the greats and was gifted with a Modigliani, raised her brood in Philly. Although she wasn’t a milk and cookies mama, she was always there, encouraging, supporting. “You’re the handsomest,
smartest person in the world. You can do no wrong. If anything bad happens, make it good.” These were all her mantras, but mama also had a few tricks up her artistic sleeve. “There were six of us, so she bought seven lamb chops,” says the mayor, laughing, implying there were lessons of negotiation to be learned. Little Oscar staked his claim—by licking the extra. Though his mama wasn’t the greatest cook, the mayor, who has dined with more celebs than Robin Leach, had his best flounder ever when his mother forgot to take the flounder out of the oven, burned it to bits—and created a gastronomic masterpiece.

Strong, liberated, and fiercely independent, she expected the same from her children. Despite her constant stream of positives, mama did take a hand to Oscar once. “I got an unsatisfactory grade in music … so I tried to commit suicide—by swallowing a mothball.” The mayor-to-be was eight at the time.

While she used unconditional encouragement with the family, this was not always the case with others. “Oh, she was opinionated and critical! But never about her family,” says the mayor. When she finally moved to Las Vegas at ninety-one, instead of moving in with Oscar and his fabulous wife, Carolyn, she insisted on her own apartment. “We got a call from the manager. They wanted her out.” It seemed the elder Mrs. Goodman was a rabble-rouser. Her objection? “No live food!” It all came from cans and boxes. “I hate it!” So, she took action—and got real potatoes. Without question, Laura Goodman’s son is a true chip.

Jason Alexander, of
Seinfeld
fame, dropped out of college in 1980 to become an actor.

He left his New Jersey home for a studio apartment in Manhattan, which broke his mother’s heart.

“She wept,” he said. “That’s what Jewish mothers do. I was throwing my life away,” reported Tim Boxer in his book
Jewish Celebrity Anecdotes.

He told her, “Mom, in ten years I’ll be doing Tevye on Broadway.”

He beat his own prediction and did Tevye nine years later in Jerome Robbins’s
Broadway.

His parents, Alex and Ruth Greenspan, attended the opening— and his mom wept throughout the show, which of course, is what Jewish mothers do.

“When he was growing up, I didn’t know he was a genius. Frankly, I didn’t know what the hell he was,” Leah Adler, mother of famed director Steven Spielberg said in Fred A. Bernstein’s
The Jewish Mother’s Hall of Fame.
“For one thing— he’ll probably take away my charge accounts for this—Steven was never a good student.”

Mother Leah, a former concert pianist, had four children with Arnold Spielberg (Steven is the oldest). After their divorce, she married Bernie Adler. Leah is the proud owner of a kosher dairy restaurant, the Milky Way, in Los Angeles—and is hands-on—and there for her customers.

Despite his classic films
(Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind),
Spielberg didn’t win his first Oscar until
Schindler’s List
(1993). Mama Leah later said: “I think if he hadn’t gotten it, you would have seen one irate Jewish mother storming that stage!”

The controversial Abbie Hoffman still had a Jewish mother, Florence. In an interview with Fred A. Bernstein she reported that while he was a fugitive, she managed to send him dental floss and toothbrushes through underground connections, along with notes reminding him of the importance of dental hygiene. No matter where he was going, or what he was doing, Florence always had the same advice: “Dress warmly.” Abbie once said: “When I think of her, I think of the Merle Haggard song. You know, ‘Mama Tried.’”

“My husband and I were musically inclined. We would rather miss a meal than miss a concert. We couldn’t afford the lower seats, so we would climb all the way to the roof. People would look askance when they saw my little son on my shoulders,” said Marutha Menuhin in a 1991 interview about her son, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, virtuoso violinist and conductor. “He never cried,” she added. “I popped a warm bottle of milk into his mouth to comfort him, but he popped it out just as quickly, because he wanted to listen intently.”

The youngster was never without two sticks in his hands to simulate the playing of a violin until age three, when he received a toy violin. At age four and a half, he insisted upon being tutored by a first-chair violinist. After scrimping, Marutha arranged for the boy’s first lessons with the violinist.

Sir Yehudi Menuhin, also a renowned humanitarian, attributed his career and philanthropy to Jewish tradition and his family’s activism.

In Fred A. Bernstein’s
The Jewish Mothers’ Hall of Fame,
Jackie Fierstein, mother of Tony Award-winning playwright and actor, Harvey Fierstein, recalled when her son was a starving playwright: “… and I mean starving,” said Jackie, who brought Harvey food in his Brooklyn basement apartment. Recently widowed at the time, she would say, “Your mother still doesn’t know how to shop for one; you’ll have to take some.” Then she’d return home—and worry. Even though those days were over, she said her son would still ask his lawyer if he could afford to buy something, and the lawyer would reply, “Harvey, the sky’s the limit.” Fortunately, Harvey’s lawyer was her other son, Ronald.

If Freud was the Father of Psychoanalysis, his Yiddishe mama, Amalie Nathansohn Freud, was definitely the “mother.” Freud, the first of eight children, was born on May 6, 1856 in Moravia to Amalie and Jakob Freud, a wool merchant. He was indulged and overly attached to mama, especially after he was spurned by a girl at age sixteen and showed no interest in women until he was twenty-six. Mama Freud became peculiar with age. Notably, she was tight-fisted and narcissistic about her appearance. At ninety-five, she complained that a photo taken of her made her look one hundred!

In Fred A. Bernstein’s
The Jewish Mothers’ Hall of Fame,
Eleanor Sedaka, mother of singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka, offered some memorable “quotables” about her son:

• “When he’s on TV, I have to watch him all alone, so I can scream and cry without anybody thinking I’m crazy.”
  

• “He’s such a marvelous person. … He’s like a piece of fresh rye bread.”
  

• “I’ll hear Neil singing and it’s like he’s singing to me. And on the outside, I’ll stay calm, but inside, everything is jumping.”
  

• “Long after he’s gone, my son will be remembered. How many mothers can say that?”
  

“I grew up in New England with a mother who was not your typical Yiddishe mama,” says rabbi and comedian Bob Alper. “My becoming a rabbi was a dream come true for her, as her brother was a rabbi who died young. She was skeptical but supportive when I turned to comedy. In fact, after my career took off, when she was eighty-five, our phone conversations inevitably began with her question, ‘Any new gigs?’ Around that same time, she attended one of my shows and I left out a joke about her for fear of offending her. She loved being the center of attention, and therefore was insulted: ‘Why didn’t you use that bit about me?’”

His mom, however, didn’t always get his wacky humor. “I put a message on my answering machine: ‘You reached 291-3664. As of next month, our number will be re-hyphenated, becoming 2913-664.’ The first call? ‘Hellooo. It’s your mother … I don’t get it.’”