Jewish Mother

"What would your father say?!"

Maxwell Sheffield: My mother derives sustenance by criticizing everything in my life.
Fran Fine: Yeah? So? Oh, I keep forgetting you're not Jewish.

— The Nanny, "The Passed-Over Story"

A Stock Character that makes frequent appearances in Jewish comedy, the stereotypical Jewish Mother is overbearing, emotionally manipulative, and persistently interferes in her children's lives long after they've become adults.

Usually, she'll speak with a Yiddish accent (it's worth noting that Jews refer to Yiddish as mammeloshen, literally "mother's tongue") or a New York-ish one, and will often be heard boasting about her offspring ("my son, the doctor..."), when she isn't nagging them. The only option in life for her children is college and (for the girls) marrying a Nice Jewish Boy (often parsed even more with "A nice Ashkenazic boy" or "A nice Ashkenazic doctor" or "A nice Ashkenazic doctor with an apartment in New York and plenty of frequent flier miles to visit your mother whom you never cawl anymore"). Likewise, a Jewish son is expected to bring home a nice Jewish girl. No matter how nice, however, this girl will not be good enough. Heaven forbid he marries a Shiksa Goddess. And above all, she'll want grandkids.

A related Stock Character is the stereotypical Jewish Grandmother: just as much meddling and interest in the personal lives of her descendants, but more likely to provide them with highly caloric snacks made with plenty of schmaltz (did we mention that being a Supreme Chef is part of the stereotype?). The Jewish Grandmother is the occasional ally of her grandchildren, as she can use on their mother the techniques of guilt and shame that their mother does on them: "Why don't you let the kids play more? Study, study, study all the time is not good for them! And then they're too tired to even visit their grandmother. Are you trying to keep me from seeing them?" "No mama..." "You be quiet! Now bring me that brisket before you ruin it."

Similar stereotypes about mothers and grandmothers are common throughout Eastern Europe, especially the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Basin among Arabs, Berbers, Turks, Greeks, Italians, and Spaniards, as well as among Latin Americans and Asians. On the other hand, the stereotype is seen as uniquely Polish in Israel itself. Apparently, the other Ashkenazim don't think it applies to them — not that there are all that many non-Polish Ashkenazim — and the first-generation Sephardic Jews just saw it as "isn't that just how all moms are?" because their Muslim and Christian Arab or Iranian neighbors had the same stereotype.

Surprisingly, the otherwise northern European Scots suffer... erm... enjoy a variation on this trope with their own mothers. Goodness Gracious Me illustrates that on the Indian subcontinent and diaspora, Hindu and Islamic mothers are also a force to be reckoned with and share many characteristics — overbearing nagging and a recourse to inducing guilt in their adult sons, while stuffing everyone with food. Poles and Russians (and Ukrainians, and Belorussians) are also in the same camp, because, well, Ashkenazi Jews are just as much Poles/Russians as they are Jews — Hell, as mentioned above, this stereotype is considered Polish in Israel. And any mother of an adult character who hails from New York City will come off this way, whether Jewish or not (after all, in New York, "even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish").

Expect a more passive-aggressive form of Jews Love to Argue with her. Heck, she's a master of Passive-Aggressive Kombat.

A Sub-Trope of My Beloved Smother.

See also I Have No Son!, Jewish American Princess, Jewish Complaining, Drama Queen. Can sometimes overlap with Education Mama.

noreallife

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Examples:

Advertising

• Beattie (Maureen Lipman), the middle-aged London Jewish mother in the British Telecom TV ads.
  Beattie: [sitting next to the phone, talking to a photo of her son] So you can't phone. You can't pick up a phone and dial. You got maybe something wrong with your finger. It's a phobia. You're telephobic.
  [the phone rings. Beattie picks up.]
  Son: [through the phone] Hello, Mum.
  [Fade out. Fade in on Beattie putting the phone down.]
  Beattie: [to the photo] So you can't visit. You can't call 'round. You can only phone. Never mind. It's a pleasure to hear your voice. [Beat] Little more often wouldn't hurt...
• The VHS promo The Invasion of Nintendo has the "invaders" torturing Ken Lobb by bringing in his mother, who nags him mercilessly until he gives them strategies for Killer Instinct.
• Plymouth used a stock comic Jewish Mother in late '60s muscle car ads, harping to her son about his 'Bananacuda'.

Comedy

• The title song from the sketch comedy album The Yiddish Are Coming! The Yiddish Are Coming! mentions Israeli soldiers "marching along with all of their mothers" and is interpolated with several jokes along these lines.
  Jewish mother: Seymour, what is this junk they've been feeding you?
  Seymour: That's not junk mama, it's K-rations.
  Jewish mother: Well, at least they're kosher.
• Jewish comedienne Judy Gold is also a lesbian with two children. She feels sorry for them for having two Jewish mothers.
• Greco-Canadian comedian Angelo Tsarouchas protests against the stereotype... by claiming Greek mothers are worse.
• Jason Alexander once appeared at the Just for Laughs festival as "Jewperman", which is what you get when Kal-El of Krypton is found and adopted by a Jewish family after landing on Earth. Unfortunately, Jewish superheroes face certain difficulties that other superheroes don't.
  Jewperman: Do you know how hard it is to maintain a secret identity when you have a Jewish mother?! "Oh, your son is the head of obstetrics at Mount Sinai? Well, let me tell you who MY son is!"

Comic Books

• Astro City: Played for laughs with Marta Dobrescu, whose mother continues to nag her to get married (and have grandkids), manipulates her to visit more often, and asks about baseball scores — as a ghost. That's one of the drawbacks of living in Shadow Hill...
• Black Panther: Ruth Cole from Black Panther (1998). Christopher Priest designed her as an Expy of Aunt May from Spider-Man if May were a stereotypical Jewish mom.
• Maus: Vladek Spiegelman is a male example, and since the comic is autobiographical, was probably also a Real Life one. It's not played for comedy, however, and borderlines on downright emotional abuse.
• The Name of the Game: Alva Strauss Arnheim. She is the main reason her sons develop like they do, and she is ready to excuse any behaviour from her eldest son, as long as he keeps the family business up and going. Her attitude gets worse after the death of her husband. Eisner modeled this story on his wife`s family background. There is good evidence Alva has been a Real Life person.

Comic Strips

• Momma is almost entirely this trope.
• PreTeena: Sabra Klein's mother is proud, protective, and smothering to her daughter. It is hinted that Sabra's multiple allergies and food phobias are down to over-protective parents. Mrs Klein also disapproves of her daughter's nickname "Stick", even though everyone calls her this.

Fan Works

• Partial Wish Fulfillment by Adrian Tullberg turns Martha Wayne into one of these.
• Mama Lipsky is already one in Kim Possible. But in RONMAN THE BARBARIAN!, this trope comes full blast, in addition to being evil, due to Mama King wanting her son to marry Kimila to secure the throne.
• In Slipping Between Worlds, Fusilier Jonathan "Tailor" Cohen joined the British Army against his parents' wishes. Born in Wales, he has the right birth qualifications to be sent to a Welsh regiment, where he is accepted by Seven Platoon largely because of his skills with tape measure, needle, and cotton. However, his distraught mother fires off a barrage of letters to the Colonel commanding, full of heartfelt questions such as ''Is he keeping well? Does the Army allow him a kosher diet? Is he allowed to respect the Sabbath? Please tell me he hasn't been drinking and smoking and getting involved with the sort of women who hang around Army barracks?" The Colonel passes the letters down the line to Cohen's platoon commander, Lieutenant Philip Holtack, who is curtly told "Deal with this, Philip".
  • An OC in the same author's Discworld tales comes from a small country in the Circle Sea where the parent religion of Omnianism still tenaciously holds on. The Cenotians respect kosher law, have a religion hedged with taboos and commandments, know the secret of creating golems, and have an origin myth of being exiled from their homeland to the banks of a river in Babylon — then finding themselves in a different world entirely, led there by a relative of the Witch of Endor called Naomi Ogg. They believe their G-d got really annoyed and chose to ratchet up the exile factor in a big way. Student Assassin Rivka-ben-Divorah is a typical Cenotian who complains to her best friend about her overbearing and protective mother who appreciates she wants to get a steady job in a prestigious profession but demands she marries a good Om-fearing Cenotian boy in a profession and buckles down to giving her lots of grandchildren and keeping a kosher kitchen as soon as can be arranged. And promise me that however many people you inhume, you respect kashrut and attend Temple every Saturday!
  • in the continuation tale Gap Year Adventures, Rivka has graduated as a an Assassin who is frighted of almost nothing. however, the one thing that terrifies her is the matchmaker Yenta Goldberg, a friend of her mother's who has taken on a difficult job. Their road trip across Howondaland has the Yenta popping up everywhere to remind Rivka she is of marriageable age and single, and do you want your mother to die of sorrow, schmoopie? ^note Rivka is pursued, in Earth terms, from her home in a place like Tel Aviv all the way across an entire continent to its version of Cape Town.
• Walburga Black from The Black Sheep Dog Series looks suspiciously like one, in spite of not being Jewish. Her eldest son running away was a source of complaints for her, but it gets cranked up when she learns he's living in a Muggle, low-class neighbourhood. Cue Walburga rearranging the flat, insisting for Sirius to attend family dinners, replacing his clothes, and freaking over his possibly dating muggle women since he ought to marry a proper pureblood lady.

Films — Animation

• Mother Gothel from Tangled has an air of this trope to herself. However, the cut verse of "Mother Knows Best" is basically a tribute to Jewish mothers in fiction.
  Go ahead, get trampled by a rhino!
  Go ahead, get mugged and left for dead!
  Me, I'm just your mother, what do I know?
  I only bathed and changed and nursed you!
  Go ahead and leave me. I deserve it.
  Let me die alone here. Be my guest.
  When it's too late you'll see, just wait.
  Mooooooother knows best!
• Griselda from Strange Magic distinctly comes off like this with the stereotypical voice, the nagging, the attempts to get her son to get married, and the passive-aggressive nature of her complaints.

Films — Live-Action

• Karen's mom in Goodfellas, right down to berating Henry for staying out too late. When they first meet, the first thing she says to Henry is "Karen tells me you're only half-Jewish." Henry is half-Italian, half-Irish, and was wearing a cross before Karen hurriedly made him cover it up so she wouldn't see it.
• Seymour's mother from the original The Little Shop of Horrors. On top of the usual stereotypes, she's also an extreme hypochondriac, to the point where Seymour has been led to believe that all normal food is prepared by adding medicines to it.
• Although she doesn't have much screentime, the protagonist's mother in Next Stop, Greenwich Village (played by Shelley Winters) somehow manages to dominate the movie (and of course she manages to drive her son up the walls when she drops by).
• Woody Allen's mother in New York Stories, who disappears in a magician's disappearing act. Her disembodied head appears floating above New York City to drive her son mad.
• A Catholic version in Saturday Night Fever: Mrs. Manero is always criticizing and guilt-tripping Tony and dotes on her older son Frankie the Priest. She is absolutely crushed when she finds out Frankie is leaving the priesthood, and ends up disowning him for "disgracing the family."
• In The Last Temptation of Christ, Mary (Jesus's mother) is portrayed this way. Word of God is it was a deliberate choice by director Martin Scorsese.
• In Monty Python's Life of Brian, the title character's mother guilt-trips him while he's on the cross: "Go ahead, be crucified. See if I care."
• In La Vérité si je mens!, a comedy set in the French Sephardic Jewish community:
  • A couple is in bed late at night when they hear the doorbell ring. "Who could show up at such an hour?" the husband asks. "Your mother?" the wife suggests. "No," the husband retorts, "my mother has her own set of keys!"
  • Sandra Benzakem's mother bombards protagonist Eddie (who passes as Jewish) with indiscreet questions and advises him to never marry a non-Jewish woman.
• Seymour's mother in The Cannonball Run despairs that her son is running around pretending to be "some goy movie star named Roger Moore".
• Gender switched in Private Benjamin with the titular character's parents. Her father in one scene does the guilt tripping and scolds her for "causing" her at the present composed and quiet Mother's nervous breakdown.
• It's never stated in The Fifth Element that Korben is Jewish, but his mother is a perfect fit for this trope. All throughout the film, she guilt-trips him over the phone for never calling or visiting her. At one point she even berates the President of the Federation because she thinks he's just some schmuck who's helping her son avoid her.
• In The Prince of Tides, Tom jokes that Dr. Lowenstein is acting this way, and she confirms that she is a Jewish mother, and that she even brought sandwiches for her son. Downplayed in that she is not particularly overbearing, just protective, accommodating, and Jewish.
• Humoresque: Mama Kantor is a Jewish mother straight from central casting. When Leon is touring Europe to great acclaim, she is following along, showing his baby pictures to random strangers. She extols how handsome he is. When it's time for him to go to France to fight in World War I, she asks him to sit in her lap like when he was a child.
• In The Great Houdinis, Harry's mother isn't happy about either his career as a magician or his marriage to a Shiksa Goddess, especially since one of his brothers is a doctor and another is a lawyer. At the beginning of his career, she keeps pressuring him to get a steady job at the tie factory.
• The Israeli film Single Plus deals with a woman's thorny relationship with a resolutely single daughter in her thirties. Mother resorts to feigning cancer and using this as emotional blackmail to force the daughter to marry and provide the desired grandchildren, as a good Jewish daughter should. Then Mum steps up the emotional pressure by refusing to take the prescribed drugs for the non-existent cancer — just to get the daughter to buck her ideas up a little.
• Kissing Jessica Stein: Jessica's mother is a textbook example. She's very emotional, nags her adult kids to do what she feels is best, and pushes for "good matches" with other people whether they want these or not (often annoying them).
• Attachment: Leah's mom Chana. She chides her often over different things, guilt trips her for this, and very often clashes with Leah about her life. Leah still lives in the same house with her (though they have separate apartments) and is a bit embarrassed about this. It turns out that Chana even casts spells to help Leah. She sacrifices herself so Leah can live at the end.

Jokes

• There's an old joke about the first Jewish President of the United States. At his swearing-in ceremony, his mother leans over to the person next to her and says, "His brother's a doctor."
• Q: What's the difference between a Jewish mother and a rabid rottweiler?
  A: The rottweiler eventually lets go.
• Q: What's the difference between a Jewish mother and a Palestinian terrorist?
  A: You can negotiate with the latter.
• Some people have parodied this trope by telling jokes about gentile mothers, who are this trope but inverted:
  Gentile: "Mom, unfortunately I can't come to your 60th birthday as I promised, because I have some very important business to do at that time."
  Mother: "Okay, I'm fine with that."
• A Jewish mother buys her son two neckties for his birthday, so the next time he goes to see her, he wears one of them. She opens the door and says, "What's the matter, you didn't like the other one?"
  • The next time he sees her he wears the other one and she says, "What, the first one isn't good enough anymore?"
  • He visits her again but this time, just to see what happens, he wears both ties. When his mother sees him, she says "Oy what a horrible mother I am, my son can't even dress himself properly!"
• A Jewish mother fiercely rebukes and berates her son for his inability to find a nice Jewish girl to settle down with and that he has been with a highly unsuitable series of Gentile women. She criticises their promiscuity, tendency to take too much strong drinks, swear, dress inappropriately, and not be Jewish. Her son thinks about this and then informs her about his new girlfriend. His mother gets on the phone with her best friend. "Well, I hold some hope for this latest girlfriend of Nathan's. Apparently she's a Goldberg!" (beat) "But what sort of a first name is Whoopi, already?"
  • A variant on this joke is that after being berated for a series of slutty, boozy, sleazy, girlfriends, and why can you not find a Jewish girl, the son brings home Amy Winehouse...
• Q: How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
  A: None. "That's all right, I'll just sit here in the dark..."
• A Jewish mother's dilemma: Finding out that her gay son's boyfriend is a doctor.
  • On the flipside, a Christian mother is appalled to discover her Jewish friend has a gay son. "How can you possibly accept him?" Her friend responds, "What do you mean? They're both doctors, what's there to complain about?" An alternative punchline is: "Oh, so now you want me to complain?"
• Gene Simmons (né Chaim Witz) relates this one in his memoir Kiss and Make-Up: "What's the difference between a Jewish mother and an Italian mother? The Italian mother says, 'If you don't do what I tell you, I'll kill youse.' The Jewish mother says, 'If you don't do what I tell you, I'll kill myself.'"
• Q: What does a Jewish mother make for dinner?
  A: Reservations!
• A Jewish son calls his mother:
  Hey Mom, how're you doing?
  I'm fine, dear.
  Oh, sorry, wrong number.
• Q: What's the difference between a Jewish mother and a vulture?
  A: A vulture waits until you're dead to eat your heart out.
• A Jewish woman turns 90, and her youngest grandson, a young gay man, decides that now is the best time for him to come out to her, as he knows that she could be gone from his life at any minute and doesn't want her to die not knowing who he really is. He comes over to her house for lunch one afternoon. After chatting for a few minutes, the young man takes a deep breath, looks his mother in the eye, and says "Bubbe, I must confess, there's a reason I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you that I'm homosexual." The grandmother looks understandably shocked. "You mean to tell me that you put your mouth on another man's private parts??" she asks, incredulously. "Ehhh, yes I do, grandma," the man replies, clearly uncomfortable. The grandmother is flabbergasted. She replies, "And you won't even TRY my rugelach?!"
• A bunch of kids are playing in the courtyard. A window opens and the mother calls out to one of them:
  - Abram, honey, time to go home!
  - Am I cold, mom?
  - No, honey, you're hungry!
• Shortly before the holidays, a Jewish woman calls her daughter on the other side of the country and tells her she and her father getting divorced as they simply can't stand each other anymore. The daughter, in full panic mode, tells her not to do anything, she'll call her other siblings and they'll be over as soon as they can. After hanging up, she tells her husband the kids are coming over for the holidays after all... and they're paying for their own tickets.
• A Jewish grandmother was taking a walk with her children when she came across an acquaintance. "Such cute grandchildren you have. How old are they?" "The doctor is two and the lawyer is five."
• A Jewish grandmother takes her grandson to the beach, but he goes out too far in the ocean. She asks the lifeguard to save him (or she asks God to save him), and he is brought back to safety, but then she says to the lifeguard (or God), "He had a hat."
• Jesus is defending a prostitute against an angry mob, saying "let whoever is without sin cast the first stone". A two-ton boulder falls out of the sky onto the prostitute. Jesus sighs wearily, looks skyward, and says "Mooooom, stop following me to work!"
• There was a Jewish boy who always wanted to try skyjumping. When he turns 18, he goes to an aero-club, but they reject him, claiming he has a weak heart. He goes to another one - rejected again, because of bad lungs. He goes through several more clubs, and it's a no-go every time. After another rejection, he cannot take it anymore and breaks down crying. The instructor feels sorry for him, so he takes him aside and quietly tells him: "I see that this is a really big deal for you, so... You didn't hear it from me, but there's this small town on the very fringe of the country, with a really tiny aero-club, just a couple of guys running it. No guarantees, but there might be a chance that your mother doesn't know about it."

Literature

• Harlan Ellison's "Mom" is about a Jewish Mother so overbearing that she comes back as a ghost after she dies just so she can continue nagging her son.
• How To Be A Jewish Mother by Dan Greenberg is the definitive text on the subject. One of the first things noted it is not necessary to be either Jewish or a mother to be a Jewish Mother.
• Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth.
  • Sophie Portnoy repeatedly nags young Alexander to finish everything on his plate, once even threatening him with a knife when he refuses to eat.
  • During the controversy following Portnoy's publication, a journalist asked Roth's mother if she thought she was a "Jewish Mother". Her reply was "All mothers are Jewish Mothers." Jewish writer/humourist Howard Jacobson has observed that this is certainly true of all comedy mothers.
• The Destroyer: Chiun, Master of Sinanju, is male. And Korean. And the world's deadliest martial artist/professional assassin. And he's still a Jewish mother to poor, poor Remo...
  • In one Destroyer fanfic, it's stated that when he's not on the job, Chiun spends his time in Florida retirement communities with the Jewish grandmothers.
  • The actor who played him in the movie, Joel Grey, is Jewish.
• The short story "Pushing the Envelope" by Desmond Warzel begins and ends with arguments between the protagonist and his Jewish Mother.
• Waldo Butters in The Dresden Files has one and Bob, who is his temporary Companion Cube, imitates her. Complete with Yiddish accent. Harry finds this hilarious.
• Isaac Babel usually portraits Russian Jewish mothers (as well as any "mother figure", which includes aunts and grandmothers) as being kind, devoted, conservative, and very fat.
• Discworld's dwarves at least occasionally seem to serve as the setting's Fantasy Counterpart Culture for Jewish culture (much as the Klatchians tend to stand in for the Middle East and surrounding regions, Quirm stands in for Italy or France depending on the book, Überwald stands in for Eastern Europe, Fourecks "is not[...] Australia. No, it's[...] somewhere entirely different which happens to be, here and there, a bit... Australian. Still... no worries, right?" etc.). The details aren't always identical — dwarven names are usually Nordic-sounding, for instance — but there are definite parallels, and when it comes to mothers, this trope is clearly in full force. For context, Carrot Ironfoundersson, a human obliviously raised by dwarves, delivers the following speech in Guards! Guards! to a bar full of brawling dwarves, reducing every last one of them to tears. (He is, one might note, also essentially serving as a gender-swapped example of this trope as he does so — but Discworld's dwarves, with rare exceptions, don't even acknowledge gender, so this isn't actually notable for the setting.) While it's established throughout the series that he has a significant amount of personal magnetism anyway, it's implied that his appeal to their mothers is what really sends them into tears.
  "Can you imagine what your poor, white-bearded old mother, slaving away back in her little hole, wondering how her son is getting on tonight, can you imagine what she'd think if she saw you now? Your own dear mothers, who first showed you how to use a pickax... she's probably thinking, I expect he's having a quiet game of dominoes or something... And I bet it's been a long time since any of you wrote her a letter, too, and you promised to write every week..."
• Downplayed in Animorphs with Rachel's mother, a career lawyer who (according to Rachel) is only happy when people are arguing, like trying to hammer out a constitution for a species of aliens who are entirely happy to leave leadership up to the very rare super-intelligent genetic anomalies they call seers. She also once tried to attack a grizzly bear with a spice rack when she thought it had eaten her daughter alive (before Rachel got it across that she WAS the bear).
• Naked Came the Stranger: Melvin Corby's mother disapproves of everything about his life, from his wife ("A Jewish girl who doesn't know enough to save chicken fat") to his name change ("What'll you tell the fancy neighbors? My name is Corby, and this is my mother, Mrs. Korbinsky?") to his seven-year-old's horseback riding lessons ("Fancy schmancy. Who needs it? Better he should get good marks").

Live-Action TV

• The Beauty Queen Of Jerusalem: Gabriel's mother Mercada is very controlling of both her son and daughter-in-law, even if she sometimes has a point (like telling Gabriel to take care of his family and business and stop spending all his money on Hookers and Blow).
• Mrs. Wolowitz in The Big Bang Theory. Although her son Howard, whom she lives with, is a successful engineer, she treats him like a small child: "Howahhhd! One of your little friends is here." She also constantly makes demands on him from offscreen.
  Mrs. Wolowitz: Howahhhd! Where's my girdle? I've looked everywhere.
  Howard: (exasperated and furious) Maybe it committed suicide!
• In Cheers, Lilith's mother Betty Sternin walks in, takes over, and provokes a massive mother-daughter row on Lilith's wedding day to Frasier Crane. During the row, she bursts into tears and reveals to Lilith that she had exactly the same row with her own mother on her wedding day.
• Mrs. Helen Seinfeld and Mrs. Estelle Costanza from Seinfeld. Especially Estelle. One wonders if she's trying to make up for the fact that her husband is not Jewish.
  • Kramer starts acting like one when tasked to cook all the food for Jewish Singles Night.
    Kramer: [to Jerry] Eat! Eat! You're nothing but skin and bones!
• Used in an episode of Frasier involving Frasier's new Jewish girlfriend and her mother. The mother is so involved in her daughter's life that arguments on the subject have apparently become routine. When one such fight breaks out and Frasier asks if he should leave the room, the mother casually answers, "Sit, we're nearly finished."
• The Nanny:
  • Fran Fine's mother Sylvia is one of the best examples in a modern sitcom. She is very Jewish, has a need to control her daughter and push her into marriage (any man will do at this point, so will almost any woman for that matter), and is keen on using guilt-tripping to get Fran to do what she wants.
  • Sylvia's mother Yetta acts like a typical doting Jewish Grandmother to Fran and the Sheffield children and occasionally like a snarky Jewish Mother to Sylvia.
  • Despite how Fran complains about how overbearing her mother is, she can sometimes show similar traits herself when it comes to the Sheffield children. It is difficult for her to let Grace go on a play date by herself for the first time, and she also tries to use guilt-trip on Maggie on occasion. Eventually she becomes their Jewish stepmother, at which point Sylvia encourages her to "unleash the power".
• In some ways, Grace's mother from Will & Grace is like this — Grace remembers being told "...the classic Dr Seuss story; One Fish, Two Fish, Goy Fish, Jew Fish" by her mother.
• Cuddy's mother in House. Made all the more annoying by the fact that she's a convert.
• In the British sitcom So Haunt Me a Gentile family moves into a house haunted by its previous owner Yetta Feldman (Miriam Karlin), who treats a Christian exorcism with scorn ("Gevalt, have you got the wrong sort of ghost!") and then becomes Jewish Mother from beyond the grave to the entire family.
• In the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode "The End", Larry has a Near-Death Experience, and he meets his dead mother in Heaven... who berates him.
• Schmidt's mother in New Girl constantly berates him and tries to change aspects of his lifestyle. When she visits him in L.A., he dreads seeing her. He asks for his long-awaited Bar Mitzvah money, but she won't give it to him until he writes thank-you letters to everyone who attended.
• British broadcasting company Channel 4 briefly ran a reality show/contest in mid-2011 called The Jewish Mother of the Year. And in Episode Two, where they have to act as matchmakers to unhitched Jewish girls...oy vey and gevalt, my life already.
• Ida Morgenstern on Rhoda.
• In the "A Little Chicken Soup Wouldn't Hurt" episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Gomer, who is about to eat a bag of peanuts when he was about to consider eating a hot dog for lunch, is befriended by Molly Gordon, who invites him over to her apartment, where he joins her in a sing-along and even though the lyrics are in Yiddish, he actually sings pretty well. Molly urges Gomer to sit down and eat, offering him some leftovers to take back to camp, which Sgt. Carter and the other Marines enjoy eating.
• Marie Barone, in Everybody Loves Raymond, is a Jewish Mother in everything but religion and ethnicity (she's Italian-American. Connoisseurs say Catholic mothers of Latin or Irish extraction are their spiritual sisters, though). She counts, as ELR is co-written by Philip Rosenthal, whose Jewish Mother helped inspire the character. Plus she is played by Jewish actress Doris Roberts.
• Call the Midwife: The Patient of the Week in Series 3, Episode 4 is Jewish and lives with her mother. On account of what seems to be a combination of Ménière's Disease and PTSD (the family rode out the Holocaust by living in a cellar), the mother gets physically ill if she attempts to leave her flat. When, in response to Dr Turner's news that her condition can be treated, her daughter and son-in-law announce a plan to move them all to Golders Green, she gets a bit passive-aggressive (understandably, since it's a big shock). However, once her granddaughter is born, she drums up the courage to leave the house...to nag her daughter about the inadequacy of the baby's clothing.
• Subverted in Arrow: Felicity might actually have a better relationship with her mother if her mother fit the stereotype, instead of being flighty and kind of ditzy.
• In The Goldbergs, the Goldberg family of Philadelphia are Ambiguously Jewish — the name fits, the younger son fits the stereotype of being nerdy and bad at sports, the daughter has a sense of spoilt entitlement, but matters of religion are not really hinted at.^note The family takes to Chinese food, pork and seafood and all, like ducks to water But mother Beverley Goldberg is a terrifying Mama Bear who fits the Jewish Mother persona to a tee.
• In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rebecca's mother is the epitome of the Jewish Mother — her very first scene in person (not over the phone) has her singing the song "Where's the Bathroom?". This being the series it is, it gets deconstructed with how unhealthy the relationship is and how badly it's affected Rebecca, both from having a mother like that and having everyone around her wave it off. Notably, her last scene in the series is Rebecca finally putting her foot down and saying that if she keeps trying to control her life she'll disown her, which Naomi grudgingly agrees to respect.
  Don't interrupt me, you're always with the talking,
  I just got off a plane, give me a moment to catch my breath
  It's the least you can do since you lived inside me for nine months
  And you still haven't told me
  Where the hell your stupid bathroom is!
• Has come up a few times on Whose Line Is It Anyway? as a suggestion; Greg Proops plays an especially good one.
• Left somewhat ambiguous on Roseanne, though it's eventually revealed that Roseanne's father was Jewish. Whether she and Jackie were raised Jewish is never confirmed, but a number of hints are dropped.
  • Averted with Roseanne's mother Bev, who despite showing all the stereotypes is Lutheran.
  • Similarly left ambiguous with Bev's mother Nana Mary, who is just as stereotypical to her daughter.
• Jackie in Friday Night Dinner is more subtle about it and very, very, British. But she can do Jewish Mother to her two sons when she has to.
• in The Osbournes, Sharon Osbourne is a terrifying Jewish Mother to her kids, and also to the man-child she married. ^note The daughter of feared music promoter and manager Don Arden, Sharon is ethnically Jewish via her parents.
• Better Things: Sam likes to play up being one at times, guilt-tripping her daughters on not appreciating her and getting far more involved with their lives than they'd often like (it rarely works, unless she's really serious about this).
• Saturday Night Live: The "Coffee Talk" sketches are hosted by Linda Richman, who exemplifies this trope, being based on Mike Myers's then-mother-in-law.
• Riffed on in Star Trek: The Original Series in "The Changeling", wherein an intelligent space probe mistakes Captain Kirk for its creator, or as he puts it: it thinks he's its mother. Since it had the ability to heal people, Kirk jokes about how proud he would have been to be the "mother" of a doctor, with the setup implying he means it in a very Jewish-mother-type way:
  "Well, it thought I was its mother, didn't it? Do you think I'm completely without feelings, Mr Spock? You saw what it did for Scotty. What a doctor it would've made. My son, the doctor. Kind of gets you right there, doesn't it?"

Music

• "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "Eat It" is basically a mother badgering her child to eat an endless array of dishes, which is something mothers of this trope like to do to their kids.

Myths & Religion

• Many interpretations of Demeter turn her into this.
  • Perhaps most notably in Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
    "You could've married the god of doctors or the god of lawyers, but noooo. You had to eat the pomegranate."
  • And in George O'Connor's Olympians. Part of why Kore comes to like the underworld is she gets to make independent choices, and Hades really listens to her and likes her ideas. She actually lies about eating the pomegranate seeds to get her 6 months of the year with him.
• The Bible:
  • The book of Judges (4:1-31) tells the story of Deborah, who leads the men of Israel to victory over the foe, berating and shaming them into picking up weapons and fighting. She explicitly says of herself after the victory: "Village life in Israel ceased, ceased until I, Deborah, arose, arose as a mother in Israel". Never get between a Jewish mother and her children!
  • The story of the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11) in which Mary informs Jesus that the party has run out of wine. Jesus's response is, essentially, "What do you want me to do about it?" Mary ignores him and tells the servants to, "Do what he tells you." Basically, Jesus's first miracle occurs because of this trope which even the Son of God Himself won't go against.

Theater

• Ida Bogen in I Can Get It For You Wholesale is very maternal and Jewish and particularly proud of her cooking (one of her songs is titled "Eat A Little Something"), though she can hardly be called manipulative when compared to her son Harry, a superlative Manipulative Bastard.
• Mark Cohen's mom from RENT.
• Claire's mother (not the eponymous mother) in My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding.
• Albert Peterson's dithering mother in Bye Bye Birdie is often portrayed this way, even though we're never given any reason to believe that the Peterson family is Jewish.
• Golde from Fiddler on the Roof.
• Aase, mother of Peer Gynt. Constantly dissatisfied with her son, and for good reason, and complaining that he didn`t marry the wealthy girl who actually wanted him. Subverted because she is a Norwegian Christian, not a Jew, but her attitude fits the trope.
• Arnold's mother Mrs. Beckoff in Torch Song Trilogy (a role written for Estelle Getty), is a sympathetic version. Still annoying, and can't understand the gay thing, but she means well underneath.

Video Games

• As revealed in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, BJ Blazkowicz's mother, Zofia, is a Jewish immigrant from Poland. While BJ's father, Rip, was an abusive wife-beater, Zofia was always good to her son, took a lot of abuse defending him, and taught him kindness and compassion. Tragically, after the Nazis took over America, Rip jumped at the opportunity to sell her out to the conquerors, condemning her to die in a concentration camp. For this, BJ would give his father his just desserts.
• The Last of Us 2: Dina is established to be Jewish after she and Ellie stumble into a synagogue. Later, she admonishes Ellie for not eating, then stops and marvels, "I sound just like my mother!"

Web Comics

• Harley's mother in Boy Meets Boy. She doesn't show up much, but she notably nagged Harley about his boyfriend Mik for a pretty long time, trying to get him to date her friend's son (who was a doctor) instead.
• Elizabeth's mother in Better Days constantly voices her disapproval of Fisk and tries to hook Elizabeth up with nerdy Jewish boys.
• Abe's mother in Alien Loves Predator. Fulfills the whole range of Jewish Mother stereotypes, despite being a Xenomorph Queen...
• In But I'm a Cat Person: Sparrow's mother (even as an ethnically Jewish pagan), and her mother before her.
  "And when is that lesbian separatist coven of yours going to give me some grandchildren, hmmm?"
• Marco's mother in Marco & Marty. An entire strip is devoted to her complaining about her son's ex-boyfriend, and she visits him at college with blintzes and brisket because he "sounded thin" on the phone.
• C-Section Comics gives us Mary as Jesus's Jewish mother.

Web Original

• In A Very Potter Musical, Molly Weasley is implied to be this trope.
• In The Onion's news videos, one ticker item read, "Jewish Scientists Discover New Way to Disappoint Parents".
• In the Nostalgia Critic review of Man of Steel, the Critic likens Clark's father to this. This is followed by a skit where a Jewish mother starts rambling on the phone about her amazing son Clark is — to a 911 operator.
  911-Operator: Never pick up a phone again.
  Jewish Mother: Why does everyone keep telling me that?!
• A Steam Train Let's Play of Civilization V features Danny (and Egoraptor) doing Brooklyn-accented Jewish Mother impressions in response to the decision to build Notre Dame in Tokyo. Hilarity Ensues.
  Danny: Y'know, Martin from across the street already built Stonehenge, and he did it in Canada!
  Ego Raptor: They don't even have things in Canada!
  Danny: It's just a buncha wood and deeuhs!
• Crazy Mazy from the Jolly Roger Telephone Company, although she's actually a grandmother. She complains (with the accent and everything) that her grandson doesn't call her often enough.

Western Animation

• Sheila Broflovski, Kyle's mom, from South Park. She's started wars over being protective of her son. Well, a war, with Canada in the movie, albeit one that inadvertently led to the Apocalypse. Good thing the Reset Button managed to get pressed...
• Marilyn Berman, Harold's mother on Hey Arnold!.
• From The Simpsons: "A grizzly bear stands 7 feet tall, weighs like a Mazda Miata, and can tear through a tree like a Jewish mother through self-esteem."
  • In "Simpson Christmas Stories," the Virgin Mary, as played by Marge in a segment about the nativity story as imagined by Homer.
    Gabriel: Mary, you carry in your womb the Son of God, who will grow up to become King of the Jews.
    Mary: So not a doctor.
    Gabriel: Well, he will be able to heal the sick.
    Mary: But nothing to hang on the wall.
• In Futurama, Dr. Zoidberg's aunt first criticizes him for wanting to become a comedian instead of a doctor, then for giving up his dream of becoming a comedian to go to medical school.
  • While not overtly Jewish, Leela's mother seems to fit this trope and is very adept at self-deprecation and passive-aggressiveness.
  Munda: It's good that Leela doesn't love us; she'll be less sad when we die.
• Snot's mom in American Dad! appears to be this in her appearance in "Moon Over Isla Island", but when Steve and Snot actually talk about her in other episodes it's revealed that she's actually an alcoholic slut who steals money from her son.
• A minor character on Drawn Together once described her mother as an "incredibly Jewish woman." Definitely Informed Judaism, since it's the one and only time in the episode the character brings up her (alleged) Jewishness.
• The Real Ghostbusters: Although initially established as being descended from a line of Christian Jews, when Egon's mother is eventually introduced, she's revealed as being one of these, to the extent that she'll mother the entire team including the secretary, Janine. Of course, Janine is used to it, given that her mother is one as well.
• Averted with Didi Pickles on Rugrats, but Didi's mother Minka fits the Jewish Grandmother mold.
• Numbuh Two's Grandma Lydia in Codename: Kids Next Door, a physically abusive Jewish Grandmother with a Yiddish accent who serves as the Evil Matriarch of his family, using Comedic Spanking to keep the kids in line while moonlighting as a supervillain.
• Gandhi has stereotypically Jewish parents in Clone High. His mother even threatens to hang herself when he tells her that he wants to become a trucker, going as far as to use "the good noose."
• Harley Quinn's mother, Mrs. Sharon Quinzel, is strongly implied to be one in Harley Quinn (2019). At first smothering and passive-aggressive, the mask drops after the The Reveal (that her parents really want her dead) and she expounds at length about how big a disappointment her daughter has turned out to be. Sharon complains that all she wanted was what every Jewish mother wants: for Harleen to marry a doctor, while wiping the blood off a knife pulled from a body. Harley pointing out that she is a doctor doesn't deter her mother, either.
• Hilariously, Doctor Doom's mother Cynthia Von Doom (or, as she prefers to be called, "Coco") is portrayed as this in The Super Hero Squad Show. She even has sonic nagging abilities. (This is strange considering her mainstream comics counterpart is of Romani heritage. To be fair, she's also usually dead...)

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