Yiddishe Mamas (3 page)

“She over cares, over worries, is very concerned about the kids … making sure they get a good education, a happy social life. Mom does everything for the kids.”

“In the minds of others a Jewish mother can be either a very nurturing, supportive, enriching woman or the opposite, a martyr, a nag, who demeans,” offers Rabbi Yocheved Mintz.

“Some think of her as overbearing, a yenta,” adds Dr. Ruth Gruber, who saved countless lives during the Holocaust and whose life was made into the film,
Haven.

“But the women I see around me are not. I love the truth and beauty about Judaism. [The Jewish mother] is warm, takes pictures with her heart. There’s something about being Jewish that comes from the heart, the soul, the
neshuma.”

These women are setting the record straight. They have to. In only decades we’ve gone from revered to needing a team of image consultants. There was a time Sophie Tucker singing “My Yiddishe Mama,” or Yiddish theater star Boris Thomashefsky— who could slip a tribute to “mama” into
Hamlet
—reduced audiences to heaving, sentimental sobs.

No more. Over the years, we’ve watched media characters such as Fran Fine, Rhoda Morgenstern, Paul Buchman, Jerry Seinfeld, and Grace Adler, among many, virtually scouting places in Boca, not in tribute, but to get rid of their kvetching (whining), interfering, critical, loudmouth but “funny” moms—oh, who they love.

Today, nourishment is portrayed as forced feeding, while succor and family sacrifice has become “suffocation.”

And Jewish mothers are supposed to accept this brutal image?
Feh!
These are the daughters of shtetl moms! Women trying to survive in poor Eastern European towns, who, shlepping Sabbath candles, were running, running, running—from pogroms, starvation, and death camps—some sacrificing their lives, holding their religion and their children close. They often bribed their way to a new land, using chutzpah, smarts, grit—to make it here and to keep
their families whole and Jewish, so their children would do better, and therefore add to the world, and give them
nakhes
(pride).

“Is there a Jewish mother? Definitely,” says Dr. Myrna Hant, visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Women at UCLA “There is truth in stereotype, but do you want to say I’m a Jewish mother and have others formulate a whole litany of who you are? The modern Jewish woman isn’t like this.”

“We are stereotyped incorrectly as overbearing, unable to cut ties with children, unable to see beyond the limited family. This does Jewish women a great injustice,” says Rabbi Shira Stern, who has a pastoral counseling practice. Rabbi Stern (the daughter of Isaac Stern) adds, “There are any number of ways of expressing Jewish motherhood. And yes, there are women who let their children actually cross the street without holding their hand—once they have the skill.”

“I have one, a Jewish mother,” says critic, and syndicated conservative radio talk-show host, Michael Medved. “I do try to avoid the term as it evokes unpleasant stereotypes which are mostly wrong,” though, he admits, “any doable stereotype has some basis in reality.”

“How many Jewish mothers spend their evenings in smoky clubs saying obscenities, and then the next day drop the kids off at Hebrew School?” says comic Judy Gold, a Jewish lesbian mother of two boys.

So much for “stereotypes.”

S
tereotypes! The very word calls up an odious Stepford image. A plaster mold, fixed, from books, TV, and film that “defines” who we are. A Jack Klugman nose, a Sylvia Fine finger in frozen Sara Lee, a Helen Seinfeld having an attack over her son’s libido during … shhh
Schindler’s List.

Jackie Mason, who became a hit with his show
The World According to Me,
has taken the “stereotyping” heat. But he’s the first to defend it by saying, “If I were Margaret Mead, they’d call it anthropology.”

It’s a great sadness that this negative, unbalanced stereotype is a dangerous cheat turning many a Jewish mother away from claiming many of the magnificent characteristics we
do
share. Just as many Italians are offended by perceptions that all are members of organized crime, some Jewish mothers are faced with similar feelings of outrage. So much so that many of us gag at the very term, “Jewish mother.” After all, who wants to be typed as Sylvia Fine?

So, naturally, while the Jewish people I interviewed were able to name characteristics, they were reluctant to “stereotype.”

Is the answer to deny there is such a phenomenon as “The Jewish mother”?

No. Just as each individual group shares belief systems, attitudes, and values, I believe we do as well. PC aside, each religion and culture, whether Italian, Irish, or the Zoa tribe, all hold commonalities that not only bind them together, but are also evident in their thinking and behavior.

But the question remains, how do we bridge the gap between the loathsome cartoon cut-out image and the very real characteristics that we, as part of a great tradition, share?

I came up with a solution (at least for me). I call it
ethno-typing.
“Ethno-typing” allows us to treasure our uniqueness as a group and as individuals without falling into the trap of carbon copying all Jewish mothers.

Ethno-typing also carries with it no positive or negative judgment. Like an examination of any ethnic group, it allows us
to look at our history, our biology, our values and characteristic traits, without prejudice or the quick sound bite.

Another “proof” that the ethno-type exists is
tribalism.
We Jewish mothers are marvelous at “recognizing” one another. In my own vast experience with the matter, we “get each other.” And if in doubt, we may fish like Ahab, or at the very least, wonder “Is she Jewish …?”
Not that it matters,
but… it does; it affects the way we communicate and shorthand our feelings.

Many of us simply feel a little more comfortable, safer, and freer with those with whom we share a common background— including a history of
tsouris
(trouble). A simple example is the use of what we call Yinglish—thanks to Leo Rosten. If our background is Eastern European, our mothers and grandmothers spoke Yiddish. Language is a critical component of culture and bonds us.

Even today, non-Yiddish-speaking Jewish mothers all understand some basic Yiddish and the Americanized version, Yinglish. Find me a Jewish mother who doesn’t understand the universal cry, “Oy!” (There could be trouble here.) “Oy vey!” (It’s getting worse.) And “Oy gevalt!” (Forget it altogether.) And most understand the myriad of words we have for luck and personalities—good and bad—and pepper “mazel,” “chutzpah,” and “shlemiel” (among more dastardly Yinglishisms) into our conversation with another member of “the tribe.”

“There is something that feels comfortable when I’m with other Jewish mothers,” says Zora Essman, mother of comedian Susie Essman. “I feel the difference, the sharing of experience.”

Although actress Julie Cobb, daughter of actor Lee J. Cobb and Yiddish theater star Helen Beverley, was not raised in a traditional Jewish family, and has married “out,” she relates that
now that she’s dating a Jew, she’s experiencing new feelings. “It’s a cellular knowing, a humor, a sensory feeling that goes deep,” she says. “It’s in the DNA. It’s
sachel
(understanding, common sense, smarts), passion. I think it’s possible that [in my past relationships] I may have been holding back a little.”

Tribal pride intact, we take on the whole of us, carrying that pride—and humiliation—to all Jews. When Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, was finally captured after his spree of serial murders, I recall my own mother saying, “Thank God, he was adopted!” It seems thousands of Jewish mothers were also sighing with relief, including comic Judy Gold’s mother.

“My mother is one of those Jewish women who think that Jewish people are perfect,” says Judy Gold. “Like when they
picked up David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, I thought she was going to have a heart attack. She called me two days later and left a message: ‘He was adopted. Talk to you later.’”

We also share the
nakhes
and the inclusiveness when a Jew “makes it” or “breaks through.” Decades ago it was John Garfield, then Tony Curtis. I heard it growing up. “Did you know Tony Curtis’s real name is Bernie Schwartz?” And “Lauren Bacall was raised right near here!” Einstein, Bernard Baruch, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, Sid Caesar, all were stars—Jewish stars. Their inclusiveness fascinated and delighted our mothers. Hey, they were family.

The late great playwright Wendy Wasserstein claimed that while her mother wasn’t religious she harped on Jewish pride. In
Stars of David,
she reported her mother knocking on the television when someone came on, to tell her he was one of us. “She told me Barry Goldwater was one of us.”

Tribalism does not only carry a community feeling, but an all-encompassing one that fuels our maternal mission.

W
e’re not wallflowers, according to Michael Medved. “She knows values and insists her children share them, live them. She treasures tradition. The keeper of the family welfare … that’s her purpose in life,” he says, adding, “She’s romantic, educated, very up on the latest trends, cognizant of what’s going on in her world around her, and how it affects the family. She’s thrifty, but not opposed to spending, even extravagantly on her children, if it will further their position in life. Her waking hours are spent figuring out ways to make her child and husband more successful and she will sacrifice.”

The Jewish mother will stand by her child, under all circumstances. Her love is constantly available and unswerving. No shlep is too much of a sacrifice. Both historically and religiously, the children have been the Jewish mother’s
job.