Our Yiddishe Mamas

“My Yiddishe mama – I miss her more than ever now

My Yiddishe mama – I long to kiss her wrinkled brow

I long to hold her hand once more as in days gone by

And ask her to forgive me for things I did that made her cry.”

My Yiddishe Mama (1925), Ben Pollack and Jack Yellen

 

A lot of people will be thinking of and thanking their Yiddishe mamas this month. Although Mother’s Day and its greeting card-and-flowers juggernaut are not a Jewish creation, now is as good a time as ever to remember and celebrate our Jewish mothers.

The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership points out that “we’ve been honouring our mothers (and fathers) since Mt. Sinai.” Jewish tradition is filled with reverence for mothers all the way from the story of the matriarchs to King Solomon’s Proverbs: “My child… do not walk away from the wisdom of your mother, for it will be a sign of grace upon your head.” (Proverbs 1:8-9)

Mother’s Day is NOT a Jewish holiday – it’s a brilliantly contrived marketing tool. But try telling that to my mother.” Liba Pearson says a day for mothers really isn’t such a bad idea, “but EVERY day should really be Mother’s Day… I still think that Mother’s Day was created by Hallmark. But you know what? Mothers – mine first among them – deserve it, and how.”

Mother’s Day isn’t just a phenomenon on this side of the Atlantic. In 1951, Yom Ha’em, Mother’s Day, was first observed in Israel in the month of Adar in honour of Henrietta Szold, the American Zionist leader and founder of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Although Szold had no children, she became mother figure to many children who immigrated to Israel. In the 1990s, the name of the day was changed to the more inclusive Yom HaMishpachah, Family Day.

Although the collective Yiddishe mama may have a European accent, a fascinating article in the Jerusalem Post suggests that “there is a hole in the eastern European Jewish soul. What is missing… is the ‘Yiddishe mama.’ The ‘Yiddishe’ was killed by the Nazis, and the ‘mama’ was crushed by decades of communism.”

The article focuses on Helena Klimova of the Council of Jewish Women of Czech Republic and the work she has done with other women to help bring out their Jewishness. “Human emotional life is based on direct, intimate, face-to-face relations, on the transmission from grandmother through mother to daughter and granddaughter,” Klimova says. “It needs an effort of generations to cultivate anew the tradition of warm and secure homes.

“Human emotional life is based on… the transmission from grandmother through mother to daughter and granddaughter. It needs an effort of generations to cultivate anew the tradition of warm and secure homes.”

You can never be too famous to thank your mama for your success as I learned while poring over some lovely anecdotes from the book, Yiddishe Mamas: The Truth About the Jewish Mother. Did you know that when Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, he sent a telegram home, which read, “Mother — WE won the Nobel Prize.”

After you have finished reading all about Jewish mothers, you can watch them on the silver screen, often as hectoring, self-sacrificing stereotypes. Australian filmmaker Monique Schwartz was curious about their portrayal so she decided to dig a bit deeper and she created Mamadrama: The Jewish Mother in Cinema. Schwartz analyzes Jewish mothers on the screen in Yiddish movies including Mirele Efros (1939), American films such as Portnoy’s Complaint (1972), My Favorite Year (1982) and The Jazz Singer (1927), and Israeli pictures like Noa at 17 (1981) and Summer of Aviya (1988). At the same time, Schwartz tries to reconcile screen mamas’ image with her own Jewish mother.

Esther Heller has compiled a Mother’s Day list of some of her favourite Jewish mothers, women who haven’t reinforced sexism and anti-Semitism. Among her choices are Betty Friedan, founder of the National Organization of Women, Beverly Sills, soprano and director of the New York City Opera, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer (aka Doctor Ruth), psychosexual therapist and broadcaster. Heller ends on a personal note. “I would like to add one more woman; one who is not found in reference books or on websites: Goldie Stern Heller. Goldie taught ninth and 10th grade English to many eager and not-so-eager students for 25 years in Braintree, Mass. And she inspired three other students: her daughters.”

And finally, there are the Jewish mother jokes. Telling them is like walking a tightwire between a having good laugh and perpetuating a painful stereotype… as a Toronto radio station found out. When a host asked a “How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a light bulb?” joke, a listener complained that it was anti-Semitic and offensive. The radio station apologized for the listener’s discomfort, but said no malice or offence was intended. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council agreed. It ruled that the joke was not a breach of its code of ethics since it did not attack or demean and was told in the context of other “light bulb” jokes aimed at groups including Marxists, surrealists and accountants.

However, I will venture out on that tightwire and leave you with this classic:

The married daughter calls. “Hello, Ma?”

“Shirley, darling, what’s the problem?”

“Oh, Ma, I don’t know where to begin. Both of the kids are sick with the flu. The Frigidaire has just broken down. The sink is leaking. In two hours my Hadassah group is coming here for lunch. What am I going to do?”

“Shirley, darling, don’t worry. I’m going to get on a bus and go into the city. Then I’ll take the train out to Long Island. Then I’ll walk the two miles from the station to your house. I’ll take care of the kids. I’ll cook a nice lunch for the Hadassah ladies, and I’ll even make dinner for Barry.”

“Barry – who’s Barry?”

“Barry – your husband!!”

“But, Ma, my husband’s name is Steve.”

“Is this 536-3530?”

“No, this is 555-3035.”

(Pause) “Does that mean you’re NOT coming?”

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