Yiddishe Mamas by Marnie Winston-Macauley Read Free Book Online

way … protective, focused, and we keep a benign distance. We know when to push, when to let go—and how to make our children feel safe.”
    Of course not all mamas, particularly several generations ago, were quite so educated on the art of letting go. My maternal grandmother, Bella, was Polish. She met my grandfather, Alec, a Russian, while he was on the run from the Russian Army with my infant mother. (So, who wasn’t?) Leaving their families behind, they got to America in the 1920s through bribery and boozing the border guards. She was one tough, critical, controlling mama but then, she had to be.
    When my mother married, grandma had to take backseat. During one decision-making discussion, she ventured her opinion. My father disagreed and explained patiently that now he and mom would make their own decisions. Shocked at being outsourced, Grandma screamed: “OY!!! I’m no longer the Cap’n, I’m only the Foist Mate!” Anchors oy vey!
THE ETHNO-TYPE: A MARVELOUS MYSTIQUE
    The Jewish mother: loving, nurturing, sacrificing, child-centered, bossy, verbal, tribal, overfeeding, hilarious, protective, “out there,” an activist—a woman whose background has been molded by religion, tradition, unbearable hardship and loss, and hope. All of these are the Jewish mother, but interpreted by each of us in our own unique way. Where we stand on the continuum varies, but almost all share most of these cultural traits and hope to pass them on to our children as part of our great legacy.

C HAPTER 2
From My Yiddishe Mama to the Yiddishe Yenta:
How Could This Be—And Why?
    I n seventy or so years, our complex, multidimensional, ethno-type Jewish mom has gone from love songs in praise to a sitcom insult. She’s the butt of every joke, the cause of every neurosis, the one who poohs on her children’s parades, hacks through emotional borders, manipulates to gain her own ends, and is as sensitive as roadkill.
    Jewish women, just like all women, have grown through education, feminism, and power. We have had the opportunity to be ourselves with far greater freedom and recognition than ever before.
    Yet oddly, today, the Jewish mother is still portrayed as the most negative
caricature
of the shtetl mother.
    As Jewish males predominated in TV and film, a great deal of our image has been manufactured by them and whether directly or indirectly, we have become the negative by-products of assimilation.
M EDIA: L OOKING B ACK…
    I n the 1940s and 1950s we got a glimpse of the Jewish mother through the incomparable Gertrude Berg, as Molly Goldberg, in what many consider the first true sitcom. The show, which started on radio, then moved to television, targeted the cultural differences between immigrant parents and their new-world children. During the show’s thirty-year run, the Goldbergs,like many immigrant families, “moved on up” from a New York tenement, to the Bronx, and finally to Connecticut.
    Molly, buxom and benevolent, was the family fixer, who, in her Mollyisms, or cracked Yinglish, used common sense, wisdom, and compassion as her tools to advise her family—and anyone else in her orbit. Through Berg’s highly skilled writing and performance, every show revealed a love for mankind and acceptance of human behavior. She was likeable and personal with her audience and reflected the trials, hopes, and patriotism of many immigrant groups of her time—but in a nonthreatening way, which was acceptable to postwar viewers of many religions and races.
    So much for positive ethnic images. After
The Goldbergs
ended in 1955, Jewish women mostly disappeared on air for two decades. The babies had boomed, many leaving generations between themselves and the shtetls. As families ran from their ethnic city streets to “melt” into suburbia— and the Land of Assimilation—the Vanilla families took over. The Nelsons, the Cleavers, the Andersons, and the Stones reigned in Main Street, USA, representing the generic American family