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Did you hear the one about the Jewish mother who asked her daughters to bury her behind Nordstrom's? She wanted to make sure they visited her twice a week.

What about the Jewish mother who spent hours preparing homemade chicken soup using an old family recipe only to have her daughter take one look at it and go for the canned chicken noodle? When the mother wailed and moaned and accused her daughter of not loving her, was the daughter guilty? Apologetic? No. She just said she liked canned soup better.

What about the oldest son who tried to make his Jewish mother feel guilty by saying, "You made all your mistakes on me"?

Are these a sample of the latest Jewish mother jokes? Guess again. They're some of the true stories that were exchanged last Sunday afternoon when mothers, grandmothers and even a few fathers celebrated Mother's Day at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center by looking at the lighter side of being a Jewish mother.

Led by humorist Bev Bender with a lot of audience participation, the group, which comprised mostly seniors, shared funny child-rearing experiences, kvetched a little about parent abuse and even touched on topics like sex education, guilt, the proper age at which to have a baby and the differences between sons and daughters.

"We take credit for what we do wrong," said Bender, describing the Jewish mother's Catch-22. "But never take credit for what we do right."

Lucy Isenberg, a feisty grandmother decked out in a lavender dress and hat, disagreed. She keeps her relationship with her 52- and 56-year-old sons on an even keel by taking neither credit for their successes nor responsibility for their failures. She has given up trying to be the "perfect mother." It makes life simpler.

Isenberg told of a time when her son, then 17, tiptoed into the house late at night only to find her sitting at the kitchen table waiting. He and a friend had been out with a couple of stewardesses they had met, adding that they had been invited to the young women's apartment the next night.

"Do they know how old you are?" Isenberg asked. "They could get in trouble for being with underage boys."

Next thing she knew, her son was on the phone with one of the flight attendants.

"I can't come tomorrow night," he told her. "My mother won't let me."

Bender, who admitted that she cusses a lot, particularly when driving, said one of her daughters grew up thinking the word "shmuck" meant "lousy driver."

Isenberg told how her sons still tease her about giving them a book called "Your Body and How It Works" when they hit puberty. When she recently sent one son a newspaper clipping about prostate trouble, he accused her of sending him, in effect, "Your Body and How It Works, Volume 2."

Another mother described picking her son up from day care after work and riding home on the bus. To amuse him, she would create arithmetic equations such as "What's one plus two minus one plus three?" One day, after a particularly lengthy equation, her son came up with an answer and asked if it was correct. The mother admitted to being so tired that she had lost track and didn't know. To her surprise everyone on the bus said, "He's right."

Amid the humor were some sentimental thoughts.

"Mothers, whether single or with mates, are the strongest people in the world," one woman proclaimed.

Jean Elson read a poem about not expecting Grandma to sit around in her rocking chair or to stay with the grandkids because she's at the office, out dancing or has gone back to college. Many praised grandparents, remembering their own relationships with their grandparents as well as the relationships they enjoy today with their own grandchildren.

Bender drew laughs when she said that one of the reasons grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.