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Never Mind, I'll Just Sit Here in the DarkA brief history of the Jewish mother.

By Emily Bazelon
Posted Wednesday, June 13, 2007, at 6:43 AM ET

Click here to launch a slide show.You might think that the Jewish mother we know and love and mock—self-sacrificing, neuroses-inducing, soup-peddling—either sprang whole from the head of Philip Roth or from the Bible. But neither is the case. She's the 20th-century creation of a few anthropologists and a legion of comedians. And while some of her features are all too constant, she is continually being touched up (which she no doubt appreciates).

The Jewish mother's greatest act of sacrifice, perhaps, is to be the gift that keeps on giving: first to generations of male writers like Roth, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen, and then to female ones like Wendy Wasserstein and Sarah Silverman. Click here for a slideshow based on You Never Call! You Never Write! A History of the Jewish Mother, a new book by historian Joyce Antler.

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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Sarah didn't end the Jewish mother phenomenon; she just brought it kicking and screaming into the 21st century, literally. She changed the context, tweaked the perspective and goosed up the volume, way up, to prescribe it for a generation who can't hear the music because it's too loud. (Full disclosure: The X Generation, i.e., my generation.)

What, no reference to her joke about her having mixed feelings about being raped by a Jewish doctor? I'm actually surprised that Sarah hasn't to my knowledge riffed on that bit with regard to how perhaps her mother wanted in some way for Sarah to play down that whole rape thing on account of the doctor not being married. Not that m'lady's losing her edge or anything.

There's a great movie called Mr. Saturday Night, Billy Crystal's homage to comedians in the Alan King/Catskills crew. Buddy Young Jr. (Crystal) is an aging comedian who gets up to speak at his mother's funeral and says, "When my brother first told me our mother had died, my first thought was: 'Did you get her recipe for kugel?'" It's a rather touching scene, in which he tearfully confesses to having loved making her laugh. See it. It's a great peek into the exact era of comedy we're all talking about here.

--switters

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