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R E C E N T L Y

One big dysfunctional family
By Fiona Morgan
Former cult member can laugh about it now
(03/29/99)

Remembering Carole Sund
By Wendy J. Williams
A community of mothers mourns the death of a woman murdered on a sightseeing trip
(03/26/99)

Tell me the truth
By Sallie Tisdale
Or if you're going to lie, at least do it truthfully.
(03/23/99)

Breed old, die late and leave a beautiful brain
By Michele Y. Pridmore-Brown
The evidence is in: Old mothers live longer and are smarter than the rest of us
(03/24/99)

"Jungle Book" fever
By Peter Matthiessen
How a childhood spent reading Kipling's wondrous tales gave a writer his spots -- India, Siberia, Africa
(03/23/99)

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BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

CONNED BY A JEWISH MOTHER | PAGE 1, 2
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Molly Goldberg is the Ur-Jewish mother, the one we all recognize; her voice launches many of the book's recipes with a brief anecdote. Here's what she says about potato latkes:

"Progress is a wonderful thing, and if you think that progress can't come to potato latkes you're very much mistaken. In the old days when Jake and I were first married, to make potato latkes was a long chore, but what don't you do for someone you love?"

Molly goes on to explain that now she uses an electric mixer and that "before you know it a couple of hours of work is done in a minute. Progress!"

I also liked that Molly is honest about what often motivates a cook -- a love of eating matched by an equal love of praise and flattery. She introduces her nut cake with these words:

"In the first place, when it cooks the aroma is more than delicious. In the second place, when you eat it it's a treat of the first order, and in the third place the compliments are worth more than anything put together. And oh, yes, to get a good flavor you should also buy nuts in the shell and crack yourself." (So much for time-saving progress.)

Reading these, I came to believe in Molly as a real person. She had a husband named Jake, a daughter Rosie and some interesting relations who sometimes concocted recipes on their own. Sometimes her kids would not eat vegetables, at which times she'd cook them carrots in honey. She cried when slicing onions.

Unfailingly, when searching for one small item to prepare, I'd end up reading the book -- no, poring over the book -- like an archaeologist poring over the Dead Sea Scrolls. It became a kind of lodestone for me: If I cooked with enough butter, salt, sour cream and chicken fat, I could land myself and my family in the warm, loving, safe world of Molly Goldberg, whose children's "sweetest memory" was of her challah.

Of course I love my mother and admire the way of life she modeled for her daughters. But when I think back to our all-female household -- a mother and two sisters; live-in women servants from exotic islands who would boil bones for their supper after cleaning up the leavings of ours; a neurotic and racist she-dog -- I can call up with ease the feeling of panic and loneliness that haunted me every night before falling asleep. It's pretty sad when the closest thing you have to a daily father figure is an obsequious and grinning Central Park West doorman. But even he, a wide-smiling man named Carlos -- who'd dash from the curb to the door just so you wouldn't have to break stride on your way home from school -- was a cheerful anodyne to our same-sex domicile. I remember being very sad the day the elevators went automatic and there was one less man in my girlish life.

But I digress. Or do I? Is cooking like a shtetl Jew, for me, an act of penis-conjuring? If my family had not broken up in 1970, would I give a hoot about nockerl in 1999?

At any rate, this year I browsed through the book and decided to try my hand at potato kugel. Now the first thing you should know is that Jewish cooking requires work and muscle; having forearms like Rod Laver helps when beating dozens of egg whites. The kugel was tasty, although extremely salty, which is excusable for Passover since we have to remember the salty tears the Hebrews cried while enslaved. But just to cover all the bases, I also tried the Potatoes Charlotte: not as good, and even more dishes to wash. Indeed, after an hour-long preparation, it took me a half hour to wash up. And this for a side dish.

Based on my experience, I would estimate that traditional Jewish cookery requires a woman to spend about three and a half hours per meal in the kitchen. Now factor in other housekeeping chores such as cleaning, laundry and procuring ingredients. Where did they find the time to overwhelm their children with love and affection and nosiness? More to my point, if I was in fact engaged in a complex penis-conjuring act, when would I ever find the time to settle down and enjoy the fruits of my labor?

When I decided to write about this whole experience, I returned again to my text, and lo and behold, the scales fell from my eyes. I turned straight to the title page and read as if with new eyes:

"The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook," by Gertrude Berg and Myra Waldo.

What did this mean? Evidently, these two frauds had done a little conjuring of their own. Waldo I knew from the introduction. She was the scientist who stood by Molly's side and translated her homey measurements -- snips and dashes and nips -- into standard amounts. Waldo had even testified in an introduction of her own to the pleasure she had working with Molly. "Our hope is that reading this book and cooking the recipes will bring to you some of the warmth and hospitality of Molly's kitchen."

I glanced at the copyright page: Just above the publishing dates was the disclaimer familiar to any novel reader: "All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental." I was astonished, floored, flabbergasted that it had taken me so long to realize the obvious truth. Molly Goldberg was an invention, a literary construct, a well-worn cliché created as an excuse to compile and unify a set of otherwise repulsive, heart-clogging, fat-drenched recipes that no one in their right mind ought ever to create, let alone serve to loved ones.

I had been duped by a slickly played confidence game devised by those savvy tricksters, Myra Waldo Schwartz (whose legal surname mysteriously appears only in the copyright) and Gertrude Berg. I wonder if they're still alive -- because if they are, I'd like to thank them publicly for getting me off the hook. Now that I know that authenticity is in the eye of the beholder, I doubt that I'll ever again turn to Molly Goldberg for guidance and inspiration. And as for my starchy Passover side dish, I plan to serve lo mein; its long noodles will remind us of the long years of servitude Hebrew women suffered as slaves in their kitchens.
SALON | March 30, 1999

Inda Schaenen writes frequently for Salon.