With Mother’s Day just around the corner, this newspaper chooses to take a controversial stand.
We’re for it.
Aside from providing an annual boost to the flower, candy and greeting card industries, the holiday gives us a chance to fulfill one of the more important Commandments:
“Thou shalt take thy mother out to breakfast on Sunday and there shall ye wait an hour for a table.”
And then there’s that other mitzvah about “honoring thy mother …” which Jews proudly claim as part of their culture and collective psyche. And if you still don’t get it, in Leviticus 20:9 we read: “If anyone insults his father or mother, he shall be put to death.”
(Whatever happened to a time-out?)
Of course, Judaism and motherhood go very well together. We have long had to live with the iconic Jewish Mother, an enduring figure that exists somewhere on the truth-myth continuum.
The Jewish Mother is easy to ridicule. Her image in popular culture is usually one of an overbearing nudge, a parody of a parent that borders on anti-Semitic stereotype.
She frets over her children, injects herself in every aspect of their lives, infantilizes them and then, when the frustrated kids ask her what gives, she says something like, “It’s nothing. Please don’t worry about me. Go about your business. I’ll just sit here and plotz. Oy, my back.”
It may seem funny but it’s false. The real Jewish mother is someone to reckon with. Ages ago, Judaism elevated the status of women beyond anything previously seen in the misogynistic ancient world. Because we institutionalized respect for women and mothers, they had a much stronger voice in family matters and in shaping their children’s futures.
The Talmud tells a memorable story of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Chanan. When his mother was pregnant, she would go from one beit midrash (house of study) to the next, asking the sages to pray that her child grow up to be a great scholar. Another version has it that she placed the baby’s crib adjacent to a beit midrash so that her son would hear nothing but words of Torah.
For those lucky enough to have their mothers still around on this Mother’s Day, the recommended emotion is gratitude. This holiday is about stopping time. The days and years go by, seemingly with ever-increasing speed. If we don’t put on the brakes, even if it’s once a year by rote, we may find ourselves out of time to say thank you.
So here’s to the mamas, Yiddishe and otherwise. At least on this Mother’s Day, we promise to wipe our feet and clean our plates.