Yiddishe Mamas (5 page)

There’s a correlation between the
expectation
of excellence— and satisfaction. While the Jewish mother takes great pleasure from a child’s success, with the bar set high, true satisfaction is not easy to come by—or to hold onto. A history colored by adversity, apprehension, exile, and fear of being sandbagged by “the evil eye,” brings with it the constant expectation of disappointment. Many of us rain on parades—in advance. Better we should expect the worse—so when the rain comes, we’ve already put up the umbrella.

“[The Jewish mother] finds something wrong … with everything,” remarks Judy Gold. “If we’re leaving for a trip tomorrow, she’ll say: ’Tomorrow! There’ll be the worst traffic in the world!’ If you suggest brunch …” ‘Go
out
for brunch? It’s too crowded. No one’s going out.’” (Now, that’s some logic.)

Neil Simon is a master at portraying this ethno-typical characteristic. In his
Brighton Beach Memoirs,
the mama sends her son out for a quarter pound of butter twice a day. Why not a half pound? “Suppose the house burned down this afternoon? Why do I need an extra quarter pound of butter?” she explains.

A Jewish mama and her little girl walked along the beach when a gigantic wave rolled in and swept the child to sea.

“Oh, God,” lamented the mama, her face toward heaven.

“This is my only baby! The love, the joy of my joy! Please God! Bring her back to me and I’ll go to synagogue and pray every day!”

Suddenly, another gigantic wave rolled in and deposited the girl back on the sand safe and sound.

Mama looked up and said, “… she had on a hat….”

A classic story socks a double whammy … listen.

Yankele finally got married, although his mother wasn’t thrilled with his choice, Elsa, a “smart-nik” therapist, who his mama thought had too much control over Yankele. On his birthday, she bought him two ties, one striped, one plaid.

“Oy, which to wear?!” worried Yankele when going to Mama’s. He finally decided on one.

“I see, you’re wearing the striped one,” said Mama. “What…? The plaid you don’t like?”

So when he visited the following week, Yankele, to make peace, wore
both
ties.

When his mama saw this, she grabbed her head between her hands and sobbed, “Oy! See …? I always knew, eventually, that wife of yours would turn you meshugge [nuts]!”

And what fuels the pessimistic “kvetch”? In a word, worry. “Jewish mothers … we assume the worst,” says Blu Greenberg.

Forget Murphy’s Law. Chances are his real name was Murphosky and his mama taught him: “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

“‘What if…
’ That’s my wife, Ruth,” chuckles Harry Leichter, creator of the
Schmooze News,
www.schmoozenews.com
. “She’ll figure out every single thing that could possibly happen.
‘What if…
the children don’t get a Jewish education?
What if…
we move to Minneapolis and have to drive six hours to take the kids to Hebrew school?
What if…
we move to Montana? Maybe there’s a shul in Montana?’ She’s a worrier … money, bills, the kids, parents. The ‘what if… ‘ is an analysis of every possible scenario.”

I can still remember my late mother’s face, peering out of a window at 1:00 a.m. if I wasn’t home from a date. She gave me “the basic silent look” for two days, which I suppose she felt was equal to her two hours of suffering.

I’m
a worrier. When my son was two, his pediatrician wrote on his chart: “MOTHER: LUNATIC,” which could be due to the fact that I thought a hernia in a two-year-old might be malignant. It’s in the DNA. The ethno-type no doubt contains a W-strand— for Worry. The
kinder
(children) are not only our cultural future, but a projection of ourselves—especially for the more extreme ethno-typical mother, who re-stapled the cord. And this constant “worry” has become our lead media stereotype “for the laughs.”

Yet, “worry and pessimism is a product of our history,” explains Rabbi Felipe Goodman. And God knows we’ve had a lot to worry about during our 5,000-year history.

“I worry,” reports Julie Cobb, superb actress, much like her parents, Lee J. Cobb and Yiddish theater and film star Helen
Beverley. “I’m taking a Kabbalah class with my twenty-two-year-old daughter, yet I worry about everything. Is she happy? Is she safe? What’s she eating? Is she exercising?”

Food … the universal expression of love, is particularly important for a culture that has gone without. The Jewish mother is usually not happy unless she’s feeding—
somebody.
Where food was scarce mama often sacrificed to make sure the
kinder
could eat. As newspaper editor and comic Laurie Cohen, who’s in a constant battle over food and weight, says, “I always heard children are starving in Europe!” And of course, they were.

The preparation and serving of food in Judaism—obeying kosher dietary laws—is critical spiritually, and this responsibility falls to the Jewish mother, as we’ll see later. Even today, when food is available and Kosher Lite, or picking and choosing from the Laws (if at all), is practiced by many Jewish mothers, still, the very
offering
remains a sign of hospitality and most of all, a capable
baleboste
(homemaker).

The fabulous Jewish author, feminist, and scholar, Blu Greenberg, agrees. “In that sense, I’m a Jewish mother. Food. It always was important my children should not go hungry.”

“My mother’s from the school that the minute you walk in the house you have to eat,” said Susie Essman in a 2003 interview, describing her mother, Zora. “She asks, ‘What can I get you?’ and if I say, ‘Nothing,’ the question just continues.”

“One Thanksgiving, there were only six of us, and she had two twenty-pound turkeys—plus brisket. Not to mention the eight
sides and fifteen pies and cakes. And halvah. I went onstage that night to do stand-up and I just read the menu from her dinner.”

When I spoke to mama Zora, she had a slightly different take on the matter. “My kids don’t know this part of me … a lot of it is, but it’s really not me. The fact is, I do make two turkeys on Thanksgiving but … I’m trying to please everybody … one likes this dressing, another likes that dressing. My children say I have a brisket under my skirt … not me.”

“Ess ess ess!” quips Harry Leichter. “My mother made me pregnant with all the food she gave me. She wanted to make sure I was healthy. She cooked steaks for me every day, even though she worked an eighteen-hour day. On weekends, there were seven courses.”

The remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served us nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
This oft-repeated hilarity was said by the late Calvin Trillin.

My own
bubbe was
the Empress of the Leftovers. She loved seltzer, which years ago was delivered in those marvelous blue or clear bottles that spritzed. When she came to visit, we noticed an odd pattern. There were eight or nine half-filled glasses of water in the fridge. Since she couldn’t put the unused seltzer back—she
saved
it. She wondered where the bubbles went till her dying day.

“They all have contact with their children every single day.”

—Judy Gold, comedian

“When Kerri was in Texas, I went every couple of weeks to Houston. She’s my best friend,” says Melanie Strug. “I talk to her almost every day, as well as my older daughter.”

Love and protection were partners in shtetl survival when life was brutal and enemies abounded. The two are still partners, and yes, there are moms who are comfortable with space, but the Jewish mother has a long memory, and often feels if a little involvement is good, a lot may be better. The tie between mother and child has been so historically intertwined that even now, letting go to some of us feels a little like letting go of ourselves. When it goes too far, the result can be overprotecting—or smothering. And of course, it can even be hysterical.

“My mother called just a couple of years ago to remind me not to sleep on my stomach because she said she heard on the news that sleeping on the stomach is the number-one cause of sudden infant death,” says Amy Borkowsky, comedian and creator of two volumes of the hit comedy CD and book,
Amy’s Answering Machine: Messages from Mom.
Using real messages from her mom, Amy Borkowsky became a comedy hit.

If you take kidsfirst, add worry, along with a dollop of heavy sacrifice and involvement, you get more connections than Sprint.

“When I was seven, I was once two hours late for dinner. My mother attached an egg timer to my belt. When it went off, that was when I went home,” laughs Judy Gold, who is keeping the worry/protection tradition alive. “Once, when I had to be at an audition, I asked one of my son’s teachers to walk with him and bring him home at six. Nothing at 6:15. By 6:20, I’m walking the streets hysterical! I called the head of the school, freaking out! They finally got home at seven. They were playing Game Boy. Here, I was going crazy assuming the worst.”