How to Create a Jewish Mother

Assuming that the Jewish Mother stores are all closed or too far to reach by car, I thought it might be helpful to provide instructions on how to create your own. It is clearly consistent with the whole Jewish Mother concept that you build one from scratch. In fact, that's ecologically better than buying one wholesale.

The prerequisite ingredient is guilt. Many types are suitable, provided that they are in sufficient quantity. For instance, we have the "It's been three weeks since you've called. I could be lying dead on the floor" guilt. That's guilt from omission, either of phone calls, visits or both.

The second flavor of guilt is lack of achievement guilt. This is the one that goes like this: "I paid $300,000 worth of college tuition for you to work in a department store? What ever happened to becoming a doctor or lawyer?" This one is quite useful for a Jewish Mother because it has financial and status leverage associated with it, buy one, get one free.

Finally, we have the comparison guilt. "Marge's son Ivan calls her every day. Sarah's daughter Betty takes her shopping and to the hairdresser every Saturday." You may have some challenges with this one, depending on your physical ability to commit the actions against which you are being measured.

To complete the Jewish Mother assembly you will also need a few specialty ingredients. One is the lack of embarrassment or apologies for less than perfect honesty. "Yeah, Mom, the soup is great. This is your best. No kidding." You'll stay in good graces if the JM's cooking is always better than gourmet and better than any iteration that preceded it.

Another is carte blanche with respect to grandchildren. Jewish Mothers must be allowed to lavish as much money, time and goodies on grandchildren as they choose. You will never have the option to do reverse guilt ("You'll spoil these kids, Ma") because that's absolutely prohibited. More importantly, part of the rules dictate that the JM gifts need to be the best and finest. ("Your doll that Grandma bought you is the most beautiful doll I've ever seen.")

Finally, the most difficult element to this equation. You'll need to secure equal parts of compassion, empathy, selflessness, energy, optimism and kindness. It's a scary thought to imagine that this species will disappear so with all of our dry humor and recollections of the JMs we've known in our respective pasts, the world would be seriously deprived without them.