Read Online Yiddishe Mamas by Marnie Winston-Macauley - Free Book Online Page B

devoutly Catholic, while Jewish mothers are often not religious. Jewish mothers have also had to survive in hostile environments.”
    Barry Levinson’s film
Liberty Heights
(1999) deals with racism in the 1950s using a gentle comic and sentimental touchto expose attitudes. The film centers on the Kurtzman family, Jews from Baltimore. Ben, the younger son, describes a brush with “outsiders.” In second grade, he thought the name Ping Dir was Jewish, and Min-Huey “definitely” sounded Jewish. His breakthrough occurred when he had lunch at Butch Johnson’s house. His explanation to his mother is classic as he describes the “white bread and mayonnaise” meal. “Everything was white,” he says, to which his mother replies, “Oh, they must not be Jewish. They’re the ‘other’ kind.”
    These scenes could have taken place in my home in Flushing, New York. My own mother didn’t keep kosher, but we did eat “Jewish-style,” for example: chopped liver, matzo balls, and brisket. The idea of mixing milk with meat made us gag, as did the thought of “olive loaf,” “pimento loaf,” “headcheese,” or dried beef. Large dinner sausages were never served. It was only when I was sixteen and went off to college that I learned, shocked, our “food” wasn’t “American.” I suggested we make
kasha varnishkes
(buckwheat groats with pasta bow ties) and my dorm mates looked at me as though I’d suggested chowing down on jellied eels.
    “Religion aside, [Italian] mothers are not a lot different, but Jewish mothers place much more emphasis on tradition, compared to other ethnic groups,” says Dr. Eileen Warshaw, executive director of the Jewish Heritage Center of the Southwest. “The Jewish mothers are thinking about their parents and grandparents … survival. There’s an emphasis on remembering, history, where we came from. The thread we’re holding onto the world with.”
“T HE P OLL”: N INETEEN N ON- J EWISH PERCEPTIONS OF THE JEWISH MOTHER
    I t occurred to me that “image” is often in the minds of the beholders. Any discussion, then would not be complete without sampling how we’re viewed by “outsiders:”—non-Jewish women. After all, as with all groups we are not always able to see how
others
see us clearly or even accurately.
    Having taken the odious statistics courses through college and graduate school, with an unflagging inability to figure out a chi square, I do know that nineteen people does not a sample make.
    But these anecdotal responses give us an
indication,
an idea of how we’re perceived. In fairness, while this sample of women represents different religions, regions, and ethnic groups, it is skewed. My criteria was to get feedback from people known to me to possess fairness and the ability to truth-tell without fear of insult. Some are well-known, others are in less visible pursuits.
    In addition to basic demographic information, I asked each what they think of when they hear the term “Jewish mother,” then let them expound.
    The results are fascinating—and surprising.
    1. Kaye Ballard—
actress/singer, was born in Cleveland in the 1920s and raised Italian Catholic. Currently, though Catholic, she doesn’t believe in any organized religion, but “honesty and kindness.” She has no children.
    “A Jewish mother teaches her kids smarts. An Italian mother teaches you how to cook and get married. I always told people I was Jewish because I always thought they were the smartest people in the world—lawyers, doctors. Do you ever see a professional Jewish hockey player? The Jewish mother is most concerned about children. She wants her daughter to marry someone rich, and sons are everything to them. My mother was always competing with me. She would have liked me to have been married and have kids. I never involved her in my adult life. If I gave her an inch she’d take a yard. When I did the film
A House Is Not a Home
and she saw all these gorgeous hookers, her whole comment was