Responsa
“In a world where Jews rightly feel under siege and are inclined to circle Jewish wagons, the prejudices faced by Jews who are missing some cookie-cutter marker of ‘authentic’ Jewish identity are on the increase.”
What’s in a Name? I THOROUGHLY enjoyed Glynis Ratcliffe’s feature on Jewish ap- pearance and Jewish identity. Her archetypally un-Jewish name makes us kindred spirits. I’ve lived with the are-you- really-Jewish name game all my life despite having two Jewish parents, four Jewish grandpar- ents, and seven Jewish great- grandparents. In the world of Jewish-identity prejudices, none of this pedigree quite cancels out the fact that I have (proudly) inherited the surname of my paternal great-grandfather, a Church of England Londoner who threw his lot in with the Jewish people in 1880 when he married a girl from the East End and became the father of ten Jewish children. It seems to me that in a world where Jews rightly feel under siege and are inclined to circle Jewish wagons, the prejudices faced by Jews who are missing some cookie-cutter marker of “authentic” Jewish identity are on the increase, not diminishing. STUART ERIC WOOLLEY EDMONTON
Even More Nebbishettes I ENJOYED your article about “nebbishettes,” and being of a certain age, I would add that Bette Midler and Barbra Strei- sand were also on our radars in the ’70s and ’80s, giving more range to that archetype. There’s [another] Jewish an- gle on this archetype, and it has to do with biblical characters: Leah and Rachel. It says right in the Torah: “Jacob loved Rachel and everybody hated Leah!” (I was blown away by a lecture that fleshed out these archetypes and wrote it up in the Times of Israel. ) I watched reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show over COVID, and found Mary and Rhoda were avatars of these biblical characters/archetypes, to the degree that I now think of that series as a Jewish moral- ity play. ANNETTE POIZNER TORONTO JUST WANTED to mention that Ethel Mertz may be the first nebbishette, even though she was married in I Love Lucy. Of course, Lucille Ball did all kinds
of slapstick and didn’t always look like the Ziegfeld Follies girl she once was, but just the same, Vivian Vance had to look dowdi- er. Similarly, Valerie Harper, who had been a Rockette, and had a great figure, wore baggy clothing to look zaftig as Rhoda Morgen- stern, while Mary Tyler Moore of course always looked fabulous. By the time Woody Allen made Annie Hall , he was around 40 and had cleaned up his look a bit, wearing Ralph Lauren clothes, etc. Previously, he was going for the laughs and the story, and doing his lifelong imitation of Bob Hope. There, he somehow got away with being a real leading man and not just a goofball. Personally, I never found him attractive in that way, no matter who his leading lady was, and I doubt Charlotte Rampling or Goldie Hawn would really have had a relationship with him, for example. As for Absolutely Fab- ulous , Ruby Wax, who is Jew- ish, was the main writer besides Jennifer Saunders.
SUMMER 2026
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HELENE HARRISON VANCOUVER ISLAND
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