The “Jewish Mother” in Myth and Society: A Psychoanalytic Approach (article)

The Problem

Throughout the decades a distinct personality style was related to Jewish mothers and embellished by the term “Jewish Mother.” Literature in the earlyto-mid 20th century (including fiction, movie scripts, and jokes) portrayed the Jewish mother figure in vivid colors and images as different from other maternal roles and behaviors known in the Western societies of that time. These portraits consisted of

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traits such as dominance, aggression, nurturance, and low social recognition and affiliation. The stereotype of the Jewish mother traditionally described her childrearing practices as over-nurturing, nagging, meddling, manipulating, domineering, and controlling through guilt.

Analysis of the “Jewish Mother” issue first emerged in the late 1950s and continued into the 1980s. It was conducted by the second generation of Jews in the U.S., the sons and daughters of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. When searching for their independence as young yet mature individuals, they started to question their own personality and behavior, level of socialization, and degree of achievements. When evaluating their childhood and comparing it to that of their American peers, their self-examination brought up neurotic or aggressive tendencies they might have had and as a result painted the picture of what was commonly referred to as a typical “Jewish Mother.” (See, for example: M. Wolfenstein, “Two Types of Jewish Mothers,” in M. Sklare, (Ed.), Jews, Social Patterns of an American Group, 1958, and S.F. Kriger and W.H. Kroes, “Child Rearing Attitudes of Chinese, Jewish, and Protestant Mothers,” Journal of Social Psychology, p. 86, 1972, pp. 205-210.)

The most significant work of the “Jewish Mother” myth is Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth. Roth describes the type of mother who keeps her children dependent upon her through manipulation and a melodramatic style. The maternal psychological difficulty in this context is the unbearable burden of her children’s own identity and their need to separate from the nuclear family. The explanations suggested to date for this maternal overriding of her children have been mainly sociological, attempting to see the conflict in the generation of sons and daughters. According to these explanations, the second generation felt a conflict between familial expectation to conform with Jewish tradition and their own quest for upward mobility through success in the American free society (M.K. Slater, “My Son the Doctor: Aspects of Mobility among American Jews,” American Sociological Review, p. 34, 1969; T. Pelleg-Sani, “Personality Traits of the ‘Jewish Mother’: Realities behind the Myth.” Dissertation, United States International University, 1984). Yet, an alternative explanation is that there may have been psychological forces of conflict in the Jewish mother herself as a result of her traditional positioning in the family and in the Jewish community during the previous centuries.

The “Jewish Mother” Seen through the Prism of the Hebrew Language and Myth

Written Jewish tradition encompasses many diverse views, and yet as wide-ranging as it is, it reflects no more than a one-sided perspective, since it was stated, written, read, preserved, and studied by men alone. As described by R. Elior (“A Beautiful Girl without Eyes: Women in Language, Religion, and Jewish Culture,” in D.Y. Ariel, M. Leibovits, and

M. Mazor, (Eds.), Blessed Be He for Making Me a Woman?, 1999), the language leaves no doubt as to the essence of these positions: A woman is a female (nekeva), derived from the root word nekev, denoting a hole or space. Coitus is termed tashmish, stemming from the word shimush (usage). The plural form of women, nashim, is related to the term nosheh — a creditor who comes to collect his loan. Erva (nakedness) is associated with shame and disgrace, connoting unrestrained sex. Above all, there is the concept of nida — a menstruating woman — stemming from the word nidui, meaning excommunication and banishment. An examination of these commonly used words in spoken Hebrew up to the present time casts light on the patterns of Jewish women’s physical and social presence throughout history, and the underlying causes for their cultural nonexistence and their absence from the spiritual dialogue and the world of creativity in Jewish tradition.

As opposed to a man’s, a woman’s honor was contingent on her absence from the public domain, regarding which it is stated, “All honor of a king’s daughter is directed inward” (Psalms 45:14). A woman typically led a sequestered life within the confines of her home, living under the dominion of her father or her husband, her very autonomy and existence controlled by these two figures. Traditionally, a woman was perceived as a physical entity that must be disciplined, while a man was seen as an entity that has contact with that which is holy and sacred, and thus is placed in charge of the social order. In the past, a woman was associated with nature’s

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cyclical, unbridled, eruptive, and, hence, unclean forces, which must be purified and domesticated. This view is predicated on identifying a woman’s honor with modesty, reticence, and obedience.

A somewhat different view was proposed by the Jewish myth of Lilith. This story spawned the legendary images of the independent, rebellious, licentious, and destructive Lilith, who engaged in luring and killing. The contention was that the protections designed to maintain a woman’s reticence and obedience benefit her in that they shield her and accord her dignity, but in effect they only serve to perpetuate the balance of power that determines a woman’s positioning in nature, necessitating control and keeping women out of centers of power as well as preventing their involvement in matters of culture. A woman was stripped of her dignity as an autonomous individual entitled to conduct life as she sees fit based on liberty, freedom of movement and access, equal rights, and freedom of choice. Her value and standing were determined largely by reproduction and fertility aspects. She was seen as contributing to the succession of generations and the continuity of life, defined within a physical-sexual context controlled by men.

The “Jewish Mother” in Biblical Law

Biblical law portrays a woman as a man’s property, a view manifested mainly by marriage and divorce. The man initiates the relationship, while the woman plays a passive role: “When a man taketh a wife…” (Deuteronomy 24). Moreover, the man is the one who can annul the marriage: “Then it cometh to pass, if she find no favor in his eyes … that he writeth her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand, and sendeth her out of his house” (Deuteronomy 24). Another expression of this conception is to be found in the law that regards the rape of a young girl as a transgression for which the penalty is a fine, however, this fine is paid to the father (Deuteronomy 22). A woman is also dependent on a man economically; she does not inherit and does not own property, and cannot exist without the livelihood a man provides. This is evidenced by the great concern shown by Biblical law for the widow and by its call to assist her through gifts and charity. Family purity laws reveal the conception that a woman is impure for significant periods in her life, resulting in numerous restrictions in her contacts with others and in her relations with her environment.

This brief summary conjures up the image of a very limited woman, lacking economic and personal autonomy, perceived as a danger to the community’s purity (N. Shashar-Aton, “Jewish Woman, Who Will Know Your Life?: A Brief Historical Review,” in Ariel, Leibovits, and Mazor, (Eds.), Blessed Be He?). Biblical stories of women — among them prophets, warrior women, and manipulative and cunning mothers — give no impression whatsoever that the community respected the lives and independence of women. Such accounts were more like a depiction of the potential embodied all the years in the female gender, which would come to light during a time of distress for a father, warrior, prophet, or king, in the form of a woman who dared. Evidence from the Mishnah and Talmud literature, and from literature of the period following the fall of the Roman Empire and from throughout the second millennium, do not enable one to conclude that the Jewish community let women get involved in social, intellectual, or spiritual centers of power.

Developmental Guilt, Children, and Adult Guilt Feelings — A Psychoanalytic Explanation

In effect, a Jewish woman is caught between two males: her father and husband. In her article “Feminine Guilt and the Oedipus Complex” from 1990 (in C. Zanardi, (Ed.), Essential Papers on the Psychology of Women), Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel writes that the girl at the Oedipus complex stage admires the father’s powers and abilities, a sentiment that emerges amid the disappointment experienced during development with regard to the primary love figure — the mother. The girl comes to see the fact that the father is endowed with a phallus, which both she and her mother lack, as something representing power. The internalization of the paternal power which the girl entertains in her fantasy engenders guilt feelings that are eventually resolved with the developmental understanding that when she grows up she will be able to do things like her father, and she returns to loving her mother as a figure to identify with. A woman who is not able to admire her father in childhood, because he was too authoritative, resulting in the impairment of the father’s behavior in the girl’s fantasy, remains with a guilt feeling regarding her fantasy intentions towards her father, despite her being unaware of the connection when reaching maturity. This guilt feeling is the basis for the neurotic inhibitions in the area of creativity and actions, according to this writer.

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I postulate that the Jewish woman found it difficult to admire her father and his exclusive functions in the family as well as the authoritativeness that came with fatherhood according to the Jewish tradition. Hence, she was left with guilt feelings regarding her greatness fantasies and, consequently, also with a social impotence. She returned to identifying with her nonautonomous mother, ultimately grasping that her function in this world would be limited and remain within the family domain. But so that this function should not be so limited, the Jewish woman saw in her family and children the “be all and end all,” hoping that the children would turn into her source of power in the absence of sources of power outside the family, within the community. The guilt she felt was projected onto her relations with her children, through manipulations that eventually generated guilt feelings toward her with respect to their desire to distance themselves and move away.

It is proposed here that the mother projected her ancient and unconcious guilt through projective identification and created guilt feelings in her children to defend her ego from the conflict between the grandiose fantasies of power and the traditional demands. Guilt and grandiose fantasies are adequate emotional responses in the advanced Oedipus complex at toddlerhood. However, as the complex is being purely resolved due to the presence of an authoritarian father, who blocks the opportunity of normal resolution, these emotional responses remain the property of the young girl’s self with neurotic vicissitudes at older ages. Grandiose fantasies over power that was not internalized during childhood persist during adulthood as a counter-reaction to inferiority in real life.

In American society of the 20th century there were new opportunities for freedom and independence. Therefore, it might have been the case that as the guilt over her grandiose fantasies was (apparently) developing during centuries in the presence of real inferiority, the Jewish mother in the 20th century was trying to turn over the power relations in the family and succeeded in weakening the husband, while becoming the strongest figure in the family. This was a rebellion for all the centuries of dependence and shame. The maternal conflict between the inter-generational guilt and the traditional tendencies assumed the characteristics of American society and culture, since it evoked the fantasy that anyone could succeed. The Jewish mother wanted to succeed in her own fashion, by influencing her children and planning their lives, while keeping them close to her. The children, on the other hand, sought to succeed without her, because of their embarrassment at being immigrants and their embarrassment at the impotence of her “Jewish Mother” image in social life and at work. On the other hand, the children felt guilty towards her for abandoning her, and for the fact that American society, rather than the nuclear family, was the source of their own grandiose fantasies. Such conflicting sentiments gave rise to neurotic tendencies.

Revelation of the widely accepted “Jewish Mother” concept from the 1950s shed light on the proclivity of the mother in Jewish society to create dependence and bonding with her children as a source of alternative power, in the absence for centuries of any ability to influence outside the family sphere. This explanation places the source of the conflict squarely on the mother and not the children, who strove, as guided by their developmental instincts and urges, to separate and individuate. American society came to be regarded as a generalized father figure possessed of many opportunities and great influence, whereas the father in the Jewish family was gradually diminishing in influence compared to the dominant mother. The overt manifestation of this in American society came in the 1950s, when tradition was rapidly losing ground to American liberalism, with the father’s power increasingly measured in terms of the livelihood he could provide rather than by his ability to study bible. Jewish mothers, also influenced by American liberalism, rebelled as they had never done in previous generations in Europe. However, this rebellion was accomplished by harnessing the guilt they felt regarding their grandiose fantasies, for which the conflict had not been properly resolved in childhood, and by using the children who were their main occupation. This explanation goes a long way to making clear that a nonegalitarian population that discriminates against its women will surely pay a price in its children’s development. This elucidation differs from previous explanations in that it focuses on the individual and on the intrapsychic conflicts caused by the milieu in which one lives. Accordingly, unlike earlier explanations, this one sees the root of the problem in the mother’s conflict and not the children’s. The Jewish mother was prepared to release her children to lead their independent lives only with a change in the prevailing attitude

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toward her in U.S. Jewish society and the new Israeli society.

Changes within American Jewish Religious Communities in Their Attitude toward the Woman

In the U.S. in recent decades, Jewish women have increasingly been allowed to assume religious functions in the synagogue and community previously restricted to men. The Reform Movement categorically rejected the Talmud notion maintaining that “He who teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he has taught her lechery” and issued an instruction to teach Judaism in co-ed frameworks. The Movement also refused to reconcile itself to the inequality in the marriage ceremony and decided to change this. Toward the end of the century, a handful of congregations allowed women to become members independently of their husbands, thereby enabling their participation in decision-making. Although many women opposed spiritual leadership by women, in the 1970s women began to be ordained as rabbis. In the wake of changes by the Reform Movement, the Conservative Movement struck from the prayer book those statements offensive to women’s honor, such as “Blessed be He for not making me a woman.” According to

M. Meyer, about two dozen female physicians serve today as circumcisers in U.S. Jewish congregations (“God of Abraham and Sarah: The Status of the Woman in the Jewish non-Orthodox Society,” in Ariel, Leibovits, and Mazor, (Eds.), Blessed Be He? pp. 179-188).

The Social Changes in Israel and the Prevailing Attitude toward the Jewish Mother

The partnership between men and women in founding the Jewish nation brought about a change in the nuclear family, and, in turn, also in the Israeli mother’s attitude to her children. However, these things happened gradually from the start of Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Zionist revolution focused on masculinity. A delineation of the new woman’s characteristics depicts one with a dual image: on the one hand, a new image embodying the yearning for equality, and on the other, the traditional image of feminine commitment to husband and children. The first, liberal image opened the gates of instruction to women, although within the emerging community women were kept out of public life.

According to Margalit Shiloh, the first lesson of the second wave of immigration during the 19^th century was akin to a revolution in Jewish settlement life (“The New Hebrew Woman,” in Ariel, Leibovits, and Mazor, (Eds.), Blessed Be He?, pp. 227-252). Theodor Herzl’s national vision greatly influenced many spheres of activity. The spirit of Zionism was joined by the spirits of liberalism, secularization and socialism. The period provided fertile ground for the emergence of a new feminine figure — that of a woman undergoing emancipation. It was in the shadow of the hardships and frustration during the second aliya that the new woman’s image began to take shape — one with self-awareness, fighting for her standing and advancement. The egalitarian education at the Hebrew Gymnasium founded in Jaffa in 1905 sought to impart to young girls the same attributes it wished to instill in its young boys. The school gave rise to the new Israeli intelligentsia and even realized the vision of the new Hebrew woman. Favoring the public’s needs over those of the home and family was just one facet of the revolution the young girls aspired to carry out.

During the British Mandate period, the concept of friendship supplanted the notion of the extended family, with friends forming the basis for group reference. The revolution during those years was characterized by the worship of body, youth, nature, and secularism. However, the quest for a new feminine model swung between women’s internalization of masculine values and the internalization of men’s demands of them. The model of a self-emancipating woman primarily suited single women and mothers caring for their children on their own. This changed during the 1948 War of Independence, when war was perceived by women as a defense of the home, leading them to fight alongside the men. The men, for their part, felt that an army unit without women was not a true home. The involvement of women in the defense forces was further evidence that a new society had been formed in Israel. In the nascent state’s initial years, both medicine and young parents were influenced by American trends, and with the admission of fathers into the delivery room during childbirth arose a keen desire to participate and help in childrearing. In addition, women increasingly entered the world of work outside the family. The model of two working parents who are equal partners in bringing up the children has been the prevalent model in recent years within the secular sector.

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A Mother and Her Daughter in the New Israeli Literature

The story “Apples from the Desert” by Savyon Liebrecht, an Israeli woman writer, (Apples from the Desert, 1998 (first English-language edition), pp. 65-72), is one example of many in modern Israeli literature of the emotional resolution of the female self. The story tells of Victoria, an ultra-Orthodox mother from Jerusalem, who travels out to visit her daughter, Rivka, who has left home in favor of life with a reserve army officer on a secular kibbutz. En route, the mother plans different ways of bringing her daughter back home. But when she arrives, a conversation (translated from the original Hebrew by this author) develops with her daughter, who is not yet certain she wants to marry the officer. The conversation sparks a metamorphosis in the religious mother. Victoria says, “You didn’t love your father and your father didn’t love you.” Rivka ignores her remark, but then, following a brief silence, responds, “At home … I wasn’t worth much.” “And here?” asks Victoria in a whisper. “Here, more.” Later, when the conversation gets underway again, Rivka insists on knowing, “Why did it take you six months to come here?” “Your father didn’t want me to come.” “And you have no will of your own?” – for which the mother has no answer. On returning home, Victoria confides to her sister, “Sarika, we have spent our lives alone, you and I, with our marriage ceremony. My youngest daughter taught me something. Remember how we thought she was a bit retarded, God forbid? How I would cry over her? No charm, no splendor, no wisdom, no talent, tall as a giant. We wanted to wed her to Yekutiel, and they had the nerve yet to do us a favor, as if Abarbanel’s daughter wasn’t good enough for them. And look at her today … milk and honey. And smart, too. And laughs all the time. And perhaps, with the help of God, she’ll even cause us satisfaction.”

The daughter Rivka in the story symbolizes the metamorphosis undergone by the modern Jewish woman. She is not dependent on her man or on her father. The metamorphosis undergone by the mother symbolizes the change in the mother’s dependence on her children. The mother accepts her daughter despite the separating distance, and does not manipulate her to bring her back to her and to her former lifestyle, although that was her plan.

The Resolution of the Guilt

The termination of the Oedipus conflict is marked by an end to guilt feelings and the understanding that the girl will have influence and power just like her father when she grows up. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the Jewish mother no longer needs her children to feel sources of power in relation to her husband and does not feel guilty about her fantasies of a grandiose self in which she receives her man on an equal basis. From the moment she attains equal power with her husband in the family system, as well as social status, she can release the children from her manipulativeness aimed at not losing them as sources of power. The concept of the “Jewish Mother” was apparently based on mothers stifled by an all-consuming fantasy trying to attain a position of power, to survive in a nonegalitarian society. The liberation of the woman in this sense was the liberation of her children and the safeguarding of their normal and non-neurotic development.

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