Yiddishe Mamas (38 page)

In 1955, when Einstein died, Dr. Thomas Harvey removed his brain without permission: The genius’s brain, however, looked much like any other, gray, crinkly, and, if anything, a trifle smaller than average.

When she was pregnant with her first child,
Q
UEEN
V
ICTORIA
and her husband, Prince Albert, vacationed in Hanover, Germany. The queen went into labor two months early and the famous Jewish philanthropist and British advisor
M
OSHE
M
ONTEFIORE
sought the counsel of
R
ABBI
N
ATHAN
A
DLER.
If the child was born in Germany, its succession to the British throne might be challenged. The ingenious rabbi suggested the queen give birth on an English ship in international waters! She was quickly “delivered” to the British warship
Arc Royal.
That night, future King Edward VII was born. Years later, when the Dukes Place synagogue in London was seeking a rabbi, the queen wrote on behalf of Rabbi Adler. She supported the creation of the post of Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, which Adler filled with distinction for forty-five years. During Victoria’s reign, her Jewish subjects had more rights than in any other European country.

The famous pirate
J
EAN
L
AFETTE
,
a free-thinking Jew, was many things: buccaneer, alchemist, communist, a frequenter of cabarets and balls—but still a loyal family man. This, no doubt, was greatly due to his
bubbe,
Zora Nadrimal, who raised him. According to his diary, Lafette was born in Port-au-Prince in 1782. His mother, Maria Zora Nadrimal, died soon after, and the young Jean was raised by his Jewish grandmother, Zora. His grandfather, Abhorad Nadrimal, was jailed, tortured, and died in prison in Spain. Since Jean was raised on stories of his grandfather’s suffering, he developed a hatred of all things Spanish. He described his grandmother as training him “in the habits necessary to the development of a strong personality, prepared to face the vicissitudes of life with a firm and determined will and capable of ignoring all obstacles that would retard the development of my mind.”

According to Bruno Halioua’s book,
Meres Juives des Hommes Célèbres (Jewish Mothers of Famous Men),
S
ARAH
B
ERNHARDT
, known as the Divine Sarah, had an uneven relationship with her mother Judith, a Berlin-born courtesan. Judith was mistress to upper-class men during the mid-nineteenth century, when Jewish women, newly freed from the ghettos but still in poverty, were considered exotic to the gentleman of Western Europe. Consequently, Judith Bernhardt had little time to take care of her daughter and Sarah spent the early years of her life with foster parents (her father’s identity is still unclear). When young Sarah returned home, she jumped from a window to attract her mother’s attention, breaking an arm and leg. Later on, her mother did help her career by persuading the Duke of Morny, a family “friend,” to intervene. Sarah was hired by the prestigious Comedie Francaise Theater Troupe even though the young thespian had yet to prove her talent.

L
ORNE
G
REENE
became an icon in the long-running hit,
Bonanza,
in part thanks to his Jewish mama. According to author Tim Boxer, after Lorne did the pilot in 1959, he spoke with his mom in Florida, who told him a friend had died in Hollywood, and he should “run, pay a shiva call that night.” (Shiva is a seven-day period of mourning, where the bereaved customarily stay at home and receive visitors.) Lorne told her he’d go the following evening, but mama insisted he go immediately. He listened to mama, and at the shiva home that night was an NBC executive who saw the rough cut. Lorne was signed to star in the series, which aired for fourteen years and was seen in sixty-one countries.

NOTE:
Bonanza
featured a number of Jewish story lines that weaved history with fiction. Adah Issacs Menken, whose story follows, was the subject of an episode.

A
DAH
I
SAACS
M
ENKEN
was born in 1835 in Louisiana. Her mother was probably a beautiful French Creole woman, and Auguste Theodore, a respected “free” Negro, was her likely father. But the four-times married actress, poet, and literary figure kept her first husband’s name—and religion. Adah was stunning, educated, and wild, and her dream was to perform. In
1855, when her stagecoach broke down in Texas, she met her first husband, Alexander Isaac Menken. The match instilled in Adah a lifelong adherence to Judaism, and she began to write poetry, using Hebraic illusions. The couple adored each other, but Menken wanted a traditional wife, whereas Adah preferred the adulation she received on stage.

In New York she met the Benicia Boy, Johnnie Heenan, who was a fighter. Adah was fascinated with his strength and married him. After a month, Heenan began beating her and they divorced. She did give birth to a son, but the child died at birth. Then Adah met Blondin—a daredevil who crossed Niagara Falls on a tightrope. She bargained that “perhaps” she would marry him if he’d let her dance on the tightrope above Niagara with him. He refused, afraid Adah’s beauty would distract him and he’d plunge into the Falls.

Her career soared, however, when her manager encouraged her to do
Mazeppa,
a play based on Lord Byron’s poem—that was popular on Broadway—with one significant change. At the climax of the play, the Tartar boy, stripped of his clothes by his captors and bound to the back of a wild horse, was “played” by a stuffed dummy. In Adah’s version, however, she rode the horse in nude tights. This was a shocking sight for the day and gave her instant, intense notoriety.

Her flamboyance put her in the company of the likes of Whitman, Dickens, and Twain. Adah then married American humorist Robert Newell, divorced him, and married James Barkley. They had a son, Louis Dudevant Victor Emanuel Barkley, who died in infancy. (George Sand was godmother.) Although
Mazeppa
made her famous, Adah’s deepest desire was to be considered a serious poet. She clung to her Judaism and continued to write and in the 1850s she published poems in the
Israelite.

In 1868, although treated by Napoleon Ill’s personal doctor, she died in Paris at thirty-three—apparently from peritonitis and tuberculosis. A rabbi kept a bedside vigil. Menken was buried in the Jewish section of Montparnasse Cemetery.

Fagin, the Jewish character in
Oliver Twist,
left some Jews believing
C
HARLES
D
ICKENS
was anti-semitic. In 1863,
M
RS.
E
LIZA
D
AVIS
began writing letters to Dickens to educate him about the Jewish people. Not only did Dickens donate to a Jewish cause after reading her letters, but he listened to Mrs. Davis’s criticisms of his portrayal of Jews and included her suggestions in his subsequent works. Mrs. Davis, gratified by his response, sent him Scriptures in Hebrew, adding: “Presented to Charles Dickens Esq., in grateful… recognition of… having … the noblest quality … that of atoning for an injury as soon as conscious of having inflicted it, by a Jewess.”

H
EDY
L
AMARR,
once known as the world’s most beautiful woman, was also an accomplished inventor.

She was born Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler in 1913, in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker and his wife. She longed to become an actress. Her fifth film,
Extase (Ecstacy,
1932), in which she appeared nude, made her a sensation, but it was banned in Nazi Germany.

When she married Nazi sympathizer, Fritz Mandl, he tried to buy back all the copies of the film. Supposedly, even Benito Mussolini had a copy that he refused to sell. Lamarr, unable to tolerate Mandl’s jealousy, drugged a guard, escaped, and divorced him in 1937.

Louis B. Mayer signed her, insisting she change her name and make less sensational films. In 1838, she appeared in
Algiers,
followed by
Lady of the Tropics
and
White Cargo.

When her career went into decline in the 1950s, she turned to science. Despite no formal training, she had an exceptional scientific mind, and with her coinventor George Antheil, the two developed a system for radio communication that is still at the core of many communications systems—including the GSM cell phone system, which is used by over 1.2 billion subscribers worldwide.

The basic idea was a radio control mechanism for torpedoes that would prevent jamming by using a frequency hopping mechanism.

Lamarr worked with Antheil for several months before sending a synopsis of the concept to the National Inventions Council. The director of the council suggested that they further develop the concept for patenting. They made their system operational with the help of an electrical engineer. Patent number 2,292,387 was granted on August 11, 1941, to Hedy Kiesler Markey and George Antheil, as a Secret Communication System. (Markey was the second of six of Hedy Lamarr’s husbands.)

The patent also specified that a high-altitude observation plane could be used to steer a torpedo. Antheil lobbied for support with the navy, but they declined, not wanting to put up precious resources for the development process.

In 1957, engineers at Sylvania took hold of the basic idea with electronic circuitry and in 1962, the system was used in the blockade of Cuba—three years after the patent had expired.

Though Lamarr and Antheil didn’t receive a penny for their idea, subsequent patent holders have usually referred to the Lamarr-Antheil patent as the basis of their work.

Today, the concept is used in cellular systems as well as in the basis of many military communications schemes where hopping is used to prevent jamming.

Hedy Lamarr died in January 2000 at eighty-six in a modest home in Florida. She had three children, James, Denise, and Anthony.

During her life she was quoted as saying “Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” While she was certainly glamorous, as proven by her invention, she was most certainly not stupid.

When
V
ÉRA
Slonim was asked how she met her husband of fifty-two years, Vladimir
N
ABOKOV
, she somehow “couldn’t remember.” Yet, her biographer, Stacy Schiff, who won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for
Véra: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov,
describes the marriage between Vera and Vladimir as one of the most enduring and important partnerships in literary history.

We do know a mask was involved in their initial meeting and that Véra made a dramatic entrance into Vladimir’s life on a bridge over a canal one spring evening in Berlin.

Although the young novelist was still grieving over his broken engagement to Svetlana Siewert, he corresponded with Véra when he went to France. Eventually Véra’s supportive letters, plus the hint that this relationship may have been destined, brought the couple together.

They married in 1925 and had a son, Dmitri, in 1934. Véra was Nabokov’s “everything”: muse, editor, researcher, driver, typist, agent, and more. Despite her modesty, even their son referred to her as his father’s full creative partner who typed his words, suggested alternative phrasing, contributed her observations, and later researched his lectures. Véra also played bodyguard and driver. When she accompanied him on his beloved forays into butterflying, she was the one who carried a gun for protection.

His sexually explicit novel,
Lolita,
was surprisingly considered a work of genius by Véra, who refused to let their son read Mark Twain when he was little. It was Vera who pursued publication— after fishing it out of the garbage where Vladimir threw the manuscript. It was published in 1955.