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Jewish-coded parents played by Estelle Harris and Jerry Stiller (also Jewish actors). Insofar as his character explic- itly gets a heritage, it is a brief men- tion of his father being of Tuscan ex- traction. He is also one of the most iconic Jewish characters of all time. This carries through to neb- bishettes: not all Jewish women qualify, but some non-Jewish women do. Sassy brunette Emily, Bob’s wife on The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978) was played by American Jewish actress Suzanne Pleshette, and was about as far from a nebbishette as a character could be. Actress and character alike are gorgeous. Bob—a short, slight psychologist with gentile- nebbish leanings—adores her, as does the man who lives next door, as does just about all of hetero mankind. (It’s all very 1970s.) Another character, Bob’s redhead secretary, Carol (Mar- cia Wallace), has nebbishette tenden- cies but is neither Jewish nor played by a Jewish woman. The earliest nebbishette I’m aware of is Sally Rogers, from The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), the lone wom- an behind the scenes at Carl Reiner’s fictional comedy show, cracking wise in the writers’ room but pining for Mr. Right. Sally the character and Rose Marie, who played her, were not Jew- ish, but the comedy writer and actress said to have inspired her, Selma Dia- mond, certainly was. (Canadian, even!) Curly-haired, gay-ex-husband-having publicist Edina Monsoon of Britcom Absolutely Fabulous (1992–2012) has a lanky blonde BFF a good bit her se- nior who finds a man to sleep with ev- ery time she steps outside. Edina isn’t written as Jewish, but if something about her feels that way, it may be because she is said to be inspired by real-life British-Jewish publicist Lynne Franks. Fast-forward to 2006 and there’s Liz Lemon, Tina Fey’s 30 Rock
examples and more: Mindy Cohn playing Natalie Green on the mostly 1980s teen sitcom The Facts of Life . Lena Dunham, in general, but in par- ticular as Hannah Horvath—think Alvy Singer or George Costanza but female—on her show Girls (2012– 2017). And then there is Dorothy Zbornak on The Golden Girls (1985– 1992), who was Sicilian by way of the shtetl. On the sitcom with a Jewish woman creator (Susan Harris), Estelle Getty (in the role of Sophia Petrillo, Dorothy’s mother) and Bea Arthur played a Jewish mother-daughter pair. Officially, they were Sicilian. But I know a Jewish mother-daughter pair when I see one. Some of what reads as Jewish about the duo is ineffable, but to try to make it concrete, consider the following scene from a 1990 episode. Sophia enters the kitchen and says to Dorothy: “Hurry up, get dressed, we’re gonna be late for temple.” Dorothy: “Ma, it’s Tuesday, and we’re Catholic.” A pause on Sophia’s face, robust chor- tles on the laugh track: “In that case, bacon and eggs!” Another iconic nebbishette, but whose Jewish connection goes the other direction: 1970s sitcom charac- ter Rhoda Morgenstern, first of The Mary Tyler Moore Show , then spun off on Rhoda. Rhoda is a Jewish charac- ter played (persuasively) by a gentile, Valerie Harper. The running theme is that her friend, the titular Mary, is the one who gets all the dates. There is one plot that has a man preferring Rhoda, but the punch line of the episode (“My Brother’s Keeper,” 1973) is that this man is gay. He and Rhoda are just pals. The nebbishette’s stance is one of self-deprecation. Being a neb- bishette is a matter of sensibility, in other words, not qualifying for a box on a census form or fitting a certain aesthetic. While many nebbishettes will fit the “ugly duckling” role, some
To be a nebbishette is to be open about understanding that you are not what all men are after. This is a radical position for a straight woman to take.
character—like Sally, a comedy writ- er. Lemon is based on Fey, so nobody’s Jewish here, but by that point the trope had escaped containment. Nebbishettes—whether fictional characters or real people—are Jewish in one way or another. A nebbishette canon exists in the deepest recesses of my mind, including above-mentioned
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