Let the record show that Mother’s Day, 1999, ushered in a new era of peace between two eternally warring parties: Jewish mothers and daughters.
While perhaps not as violent as the civil wars in the Balkans or the Mideast, the domestic war between Jewish mothers and daughters has been painful in its own right, with friction, turmoil, recrimination and bitterness — not to mention therapists’ bills — generation to generation.
The signs of an enduring reconciliation are evident everywhere, including the pile of luncheon invitations on my desk: Our Jewish communities across the political and ideological spectrum are taking the month of May to honor women for an astounding array of good works, including charity, business and the arts. What is particularly noteworthy is that the honorees span the generations, young and old committed to community well-being.
A new consciousness is at hand of what the mother/daughter war has cost us. The Hadassah-sponsored Morning Star Commission, named after Herman Wouk’s quintessential “princess,” is comprised of Hollywood heavy hitters out to change how the media portrays Jewish women. These writers and producers know that the Jewish Mother and the Jewish American Princess may be a generation apart but share the same clichéd fate.
Neil Simon, Woody Allen and Joseph Heller are no longer having the last word. This weekend I participated in “Momma Mommy Mom,” a celebration of Jewish mothers by the Jewish Women’s Theatre Project. The group, underwritten by the University of Judaism, is committed to positive role-models of Jewish women. It was possible to fill an evening’s entertainment about Jewish mothers, including some 30 vignettes, without ever resorting to Borscht-belt humor.
Why is peace between mothers and daughters so important to us now?
Well, perhaps there’s no secret here. The baby boom women, that first generation of feminists, are now parents themselves. There’s nothing like raising my own teenage daughter to give me a little rachmonis for my own mother and what she went through with me.
But it’s more than being a parent myself that makes me see my own parents in a new light.
The fact is that “generation gap” has less meaning to Jewish women now than at any time in modern history. The war between Jewish mothers and daughters has its roots in challenging social and economic circumstances that wreaked havoc with family harmony.
The first generation, that of the immigrants, suffered the culture shock of the old world and the new. To read the stories of Mary Antin and Anzia Yzierska is to understand just how little Jewish women were in charge of their own lives.
The second generation, that of Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, took advantage of American-style opportunity. They created an equality movement, but in many ways they also suffered through ridicule for their pioneering, creative vision of how Jewish values and American democracy could work together for the betterment of all. It’s no secret why the Jewish American Princess and the Jewish Mother endured and in fact became more lethal at the very moment when women were making their greatest strides in American civic and corporate life. Jewish women have been the clowns of punishment; mother and daughter equally ridiculed but turning one against the other. That brings us to my own generation, the feminist daughters. We were by turns embarrassed by our mothers and embarrassed by our past lives as Nice Jewish Girls. Two years ago I published an anthology of new writings by Jewish women, under that title, “Nice Jewish Girls.” I endeavored to use only positive images, and though I ultimately succeeded, it was rough going. I would have no trouble filling several volumes now.
That’s because the fourth generation is finally bringing to us reconciliation and peace. And it’s possible to see why. Each generation of Jewish women until now has had to slough off the women of their past in order to move ahead.
The immigrant generation had to forget their mothers and grandmothers left behind in the old country.
The next generation had to reject the shtetl ways of their mothers in favor of assimilation and suburbia.
The feminist generation had to spurn their mothers’ ambivalent housewifery and assimilation to fulfill their own dreams. Three generations at war. A psychiatrist’s dream, but a Jewish family’s nightmare.
We have yet to measure the psychological burden of having to turn against one’s mother in order to become one’s better self. But anyone who has ever ridiculed a mother’s fears or character traits bears some of those scars.
That’s why this moment of peace is one for the books. Our daughters are at home in America; at home as women, as Jews. They don’t need to learn a new language, don’t have to hide their ambitions and they are free to explore their spirituality as no generation before. Jewish mothers are no longer so angry by the denial of their own opportunities that they look at their daughters and granddaughters only through the prism of their own regret. Finally, as women, Americans and Jews, we have nothing to prove.
At the end of the 20th century, the great convergence of the historic themes of this century is only now taking place, with profound implications. But one thing’s for sure: It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for.