Mothers’ Day
Yiddishe Mamas: Classic and Contemporary
By Mark Mietkiewicz

“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 [bit.ly/mama15]

A lot of people will be thinking of and thanking their Yiddishe mamas this Sunday. 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.
CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership points out “we’ve been honoring our mothers (and fathers) since Mt. Sinai” and that 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) [bit.ly/mama2]
“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.” [bit.ly/mama3]
When people claim that Mother’s Day is not a Jewish holiday, they aren’t completely correct. According to Eliezer Segal, a sort of Mother’s Day is observed in Israel (especially among preschoolers) on the 11th of the month of Cheshvan in the fall. That’s the traditional date of the death of the matriarch Rachel. Segal investigates what it is about Rachel that embodies the Jewish ideal of motherhood – who “for much of her married life had to resign herself to watching her sister Leah bear Jacob many children, until she herself finally gave birth to Joseph.” [bit.ly/mama4]
Inda Schaenen wants to be a Yiddishe mama. The problem is that she had no role model since she grew up with a Jewish mother not a mama. (“Her body was Jean Naté and hair dye, razors and eyebrow tweezers. Our kitchen did not reek of the yeasty, buttery, beefy fumes of daily cookery. It smelled clean.”). To fill in the gap, Inda turned to “The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook” [which] became a kind of lodestone for me: If I cooked with enough butter, salt, sour cream and chicken fat, I could land myself and my family in the warm, loving, safe world of Molly Goldberg.” Unfortunately, Inda had a bit of falling out with her newfound mama. But you’ll have to check out her article at Salon.com to find out what happened. [bit.ly/mama7]
If you want to read about the lives of some real Jewish mothers who brought up some famous boys and girls, read the interviews with Beatty Rutman (Bob Dylan), Florence Hoffman (Abbie Hoffman), Leah Adler (Steven Spielberg) as part of the book the “Official Jewish Mothers’ Hall of Fame.” Take a look and shep some nachas. [bit.ly/mama16] Or you can find a list of dozens of books that focus on, or feature, Jewish mothers in fact and fiction. [bit.ly/mama10]
Esther Heller has compiled a Mother’s Day list of some of her favorite Jewish mothers, women she feels don’t reinforce 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. [bit.ly/mama17]
Slate.com has put together a great slideshow looking at the history of some real and fictional Jewish Mothers including a classic clip from Woody Allen’s “New York Stories” in which a Jewish mother shows up as a huge head bobbing above the skies of Manhattan and continues to embarrass her son, Sheldon. [bit.ly/mama12] In “Mamadrama: The Jewish Mother in Cinema,” Australian filmmaker Monique Schwartz analyzes Jewish mothers on the screen in Yiddish movies like “Mirele Efros” (USA, 1939), “Portnoy’s Complaint” (USA, 1972) and “Summer of Aviya “(Israel, 1988). [bit.ly/mama13]
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 when Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921, he sent a telegram home which read, “Mother — WE won the Nobel Prize.” [bit.ly/mama14]

Mark Mietkiewicz is a Toronto-based Internet producer who writes, lectures and teaches about the Jewish Internet.

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