Celebrating Women and Mother’s Day Supplement to Jewish News April 25, 2022 jewishnewsva.org | April 25, 2022 | Women | JEWISH NEWS | 17
Women Dear Readers,
R I S T O R A N T E
I
I N S P I R E D
interesting how much my mom moves to the front of the line.” I can’t agree more.
n a recent interview in Parade Magazine (yes, I read EVERYTHING!), Viola Davis
B Y
I T A LY
(The Help, How to Get Away with Murder) was asked about the strong women who
inspired her. Part of her response included, “As I move through my life, it’s really
The women in our lives, especially our mothers and grandmothers, make tremendous imprints on us…if we’re smart enough to pay attention. As we approach Mother’s Day (and before I read the Davis interview, by the way), Jewish News asked several women to write about one or two—of the probably many —things they’ve learned from their moms. Their pieces are so heartfelt, respectful, adoring, and loving that they are inspiring. They begin on page 19. Thank you Janet Mercadante, Joni Burstein, Alicia Friedman, Megan Zuckerman, Shaye Arluk, Andie Eichelbaum, and Miche Anderson for sharing. Beanie Feldstein is back on Broadway, but this time in the ultimate Jewish female role, playing Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Can you imagine being the first to follow Barbara Streisand on stage on Broadway in that iconic role? New York Jewish Week asked Feldstein all the right questions for the interview on page 21. There’s more in this section, along with a host of terrific advertisers—some that offer delicious options for where and how to celebrate the special women in our lives on Mother’s Day. However or wherever you spend Sunday, May 8, all of us at Jewish News hope you
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have a very Happy Mother’s Day!
Terri Denison Editor
Women Lessons learned from moms W
hat one (or two) thing(s)—of the probably many—have you learned from your mom? We posed the question to several women, and not surprisingly, their responses are filled with respect, admiration, love, and even some humor. How fortunate these women are to have had such strong role models…and how fortunate for us that they’ve shared their lessons…and words of wisdom.
Lorraine Fink Joni Fink Burstein
Lisa Rosenbach Andie Eichelbaum
Joan London Alicia Friedman
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Lorraine S. Fink and Joni Fink Burstein in Norfolk earlier this month.
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have the good fortune to still be learning from my mom, and the older I get, the more I recognize how unique and positive she is. She always gives people the benefit of the doubt and is the most appreciative person I’ve ever met. She turns every little thing into an object of wonder, full of praise and excitement—and it is genuine. She was into gratitude long before it was “in.” When I was a child, if I said Sally was mean to me, she would say, “Poor Sally—she must have been having a bad day.” She quickly shifted my self-pity or hurt feelings to considering Sally’s situation. Trained as a bookkeeper, my mom has meticulous attention to detail and her standard is perfection. At the same time, she is a free-flowing artist and accepts and treasures everything just the way a person offers it. She inspires me to live up to her example and strike that balance. I am still trying! With her wonderful sense of humor and positive and appreciative approach to life, the main thing I’ve learned is how lucky I am to have her as my mom.
here are many lessons I have learned from my mother throughout my 26 years of life. Out of all of them, resiliency has to be the most important. My mom is one of the most resilient women I’ve ever met. Psychologists define resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress—such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. As much as resilience involves “bouncing back” from these difficult experiences, it can also involve profound personal growth. Life can, and has been, difficult in so many different ways. At an age not much older than I am now, my mother lost her husband and had to figure out a way move forward while simultaneously raising three girls under the age of six. Not only did she do it, but she showed us firsthand what the process of self-growth truly looks like. I now strive for that same type of growth through resiliency in everything I do.
Lisa Rosenbach holds her young daughter, Andie Eichelbaum in the mid 1990s.
Joan London and Alicia Friedman.
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o pick one thing I have learned from my mom, I began reflecting and realized that so many of the qualities I like about myself are all attributed to my mom. Identifying one life lesson I have learned from mom would have to be resiliency and grace. My mom’s life has been filled with so many amazing blessings and she will be the first one to tell you how grateful she feels for her lot in life. That being said, when adversity rears its head, Mom has picked up the pieces, shown strength and courage to move forward, and always looked for the silver lining. Her positive outlook and discipline to not allow herself to go down a dark path is a beautiful quality and one I admire so much. Mom is a woman who loves hard and deeply and would do anything for her family. I count my blessings everyday that Joan London is my Mom.
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Women Grace Weinstein Janet Mercadante
Judy Anderson Annabel Sacks Micheline Anderson
Leslie Siegel Megan Zuckerman and Shaye Arluk
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Janet Mercadante with her mom, Grace Weinstein, at a Passover Seder circa 1968(ish).
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o my kids, I call them my WOWs (Words of Wisdom). My mom, Grace Weinstein (of blessed memory), had her own set of WOWs, some of which were stated, and others simply demonstrated by how she lived her life. All continue to resonate with me. She used to say that she would never take the credit for how Larry and I turned out, because if she took the credit she would have to take the blame. She was teaching us to be humble. My mom was an accomplished author who always worked from home. She showed me that it was possible to have a successful career, while at the same time being a hands-on mom. I have tried to emulate her success in both. Mom battled breast cancer and ultimately lost the fight in 2012, but she lived 26 years after being given less than a 20% chance of living five. By example, she taught me to face life’s challenges with courage and optimism, to just keep moving forward, and to never accept an end date. Sorry, Mom, but I have to give you credit for that one!
hen I was eight, my mother, Judy Anderson, began graduate school to become a physical therapist. It meant a change in routine, in role transitions for her. For me, it meant being told, “Mom can’t take us to practice or dance class” or “Mom has a big test, we need to let her be.” While I remember the disruption, what stuck with me was the doggedness with which she pursued her professional ambition while balancing the responsibilities of being a nurturing, caring mother. Beyond the minor inconvenience, she taught me the value of being tenacious, of always being growth-oriented. She came by this naturally. My grandmother, Annabel Sacks, was a master of reinventing herself. First, a naval officer’s wife, then a teacher, then a professor, then a community organizer and leader, and of course, a grandmother. My mother and grandmother truly embody the eshet chayil, woman of valor. As a psychologist, I work with women extricating themselves from their postpartum depression. Many times we assess values to motivate and create a life worth living. Inevitably, at least one value is derived from a desire to parent differently from one’s own mother. When I reflect on my own parenting values, I am fortunate they require no such negation or rejection. Rather, as I raise my daughter, I seek to emulate the pioneering spirit of my mother and grandmother and hope to continue this legacy of independent, fierce, and truly fabulous women.
Judy Anderson, Micheline Anderson, and Annabel Sacks with Lillian.
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Megan Zuckerman, Shaye Arluk,and Leslie Siegel.
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ow, our MOM! How do you put into words the most selfless, empathetic, strong woman we have ever met? Our mom is a powerhouse. She is a powerhouse of love, of dedication to her family, her friends, those who she meets who become fast friends due to her unwavering curiosity in everyone’s story, and to her many, many, many philanthropic causes she holds near and dear to her heart. She is a powerhouse of strength, holding true to the values she believes in and raising us to be strong independent women with our own convictions and voices. So what has our mom taught us? She has taught us everything, but most importantly, she has taught us how to love fiercely and to be generous with our time and resources helping those we know and those we have never met, but are nonetheless in need. Written with love for our mom, Leslie Siegel.
Women Beanie Feldstein opens up on Funny Girl role Linda Buchwald
(New York Jewish Week)—Funny Girl is so deeply ingrained in Beanie Feldstein’s life that she doesn’t even remember the first time she watched the movie. “From my developmental psychology classes in college, I think I remember that your first memories are around 3 years old,” she tellls the New York Jewish Week. Funny Girl “precedes my memory. I’ve always loved it as far as I’m concerned.” Even if she doesn’t recall all the details now, the 1968 movie—starring Barbra Streisand, who plays real-life Jewish vaudeville star and comedian Fanny Brice—made enough of an impression that Feldstein had a Funny Girl-themed birthday party when she turned 3, leopard-print costume and all. Of course, now, in an incredible turn of events, Feldstein, 28—known for movies like Lady Bird and Booksmart—is starring in the first-ever Broadway revival of Funny Girl. (The musical, which also starred Streisand, opened on Broadway in 1964 and ran for more than three years.) What did such a young girl find appealing about a show about a strong-willed performer—with a story that also focuses on Brice’s rocky relationship with her suave, gambler husband, Nick Arnstein? “The biggest thing that impacted me was her ambition,” Feldstein says. “The character of Fanny Brice was so unrelenting in her pursuit of her own career and her love of her performing and I think, even at a young age, I really latched onto that.” She was also drawn to the score, featuring songs like Don’t Rain on My Parade, I’m the Greatest Star, and People, all of which have become standards of the American songbook. “Those songs have lasted in our hearts and our ears for almost 60 years now—and I’m sure they will continue to, forever,” Feldstein says. “You can’t hear the opening chords of Don’t Rain on My Parade and have it not just course through your body—even now, night after night.”
This interview has been lightly condensed and edited. New York Jewish Week: What does it mean to you, as a Jewish woman, to get to play this role? Beanie Feldstein: It’s such a big question, I could write a dissertation on it. But I truly believe that any Jewish woman who wants to be funny and perform and sing owes something to Fanny Brice. So, to get to play that trailblazing woman and bring her story back to Broadway 60 years after the original production, and over 100 years after she was a star herself, it’s all-encompassing and it’s very surreal and it’s incredibly moving because she opened a door that none of us could have walked through if it wasn’t for her. That’s a tremendous legacy. I think her legacy lives, of course, in Barbra Streisand, but [also] in people like Bette Midler and Sarah Silverman. Any of us who are bagels on plates full of onion rolls, we know that feeling and it’s very meaningful to me to get to bring her story back to 2022 Broadway audiences. NYJW: You mentioned Bette Midler, who you worked with in your Broadway debut in Hello, Dolly! in 2017. What did you learn working with her? BF: So much. To get to work with Bette Midler any time in your life, but specifically in your early 20s in your Broadway debut, was incredibly formative. She never sits down. I mean that so literally. She is the most hardworking person in the room. And when you’re someone like Bette Midler and you have such a tremendous body of work and following and people just adore every word that comes out of your mouth, she didn’t have to work hard. She could have walked onstage and the audience would have been in the palm of her hand. But the reason that she’s as genius as she is, and as beloved, proves to me that she is that way because she puts in the work every minute of every day to make whatever she’s working on the best,
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the most funny, the most precise. She’s so detailed. That was such an incredible kind of master class to witness her work. And she’s also one of the funniest people you’ll ever be in a room with, so there’s that, too. NYJW: There has been a lot of talk lately about whether Jewish characters, especially women, should always be played by Jews. Do you have thoughts on this? BF: Again, I think it’s too big of a conversation to answer in three or four sentences. I was a sociology major in college, so I could write 15 academic articles about the topic. There’s so much to say. I’m playing Fanny Brice and I just finished playing Monica Lewinsky [in Impeachment: American Crime Story] and I think for me, as a Jewish woman, it’s been very meaningful to play Jewish women in history. And I love and cherish that we’ve added a lot of Yiddish to the show. The fact that I’m on a Broadway stage dancing under a huge banner that says “Mazel tov, Fanny!” is for me, as a Jewish woman, very meaningful and fulfilling and emotional and special. I think to get to play one of the most tremendous Jewish women in our history, especially entertainment history, is incredibly meaningful for me as a Jewish woman.
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NYJW: What was your own Jewish upbringing like? BF: Not to flex, but I was a junior cantor. I grew up going to a Reform synagogue [Temple Judea] in West L.A. and I became very close with my cantor. I’m still very close to him, Cantor Yonah Kliger. And he has always been a beautiful mentor in my life. Obviously, I love to sing. I grew up singing, so he quickly kind of roped me into doing a lot of singing with him at shul. We used to sing before I went away to college [at Wesleyan University]. We used to sing Sim Shalom every year during the High Holiday services. I do remember the day before my bat mitzvah, he was like, “Beanie, I really think that when you’re older you should become a cantor,” and I remember looking at him and just shaking my head and I was like, “I’m so sorry to disappoint you, but I want to be an actor.” My path as a cantor ended very soon. But I was always very close to him so he’s a
wonderful influence in my life. I’m very culturally Jewish. And always singing in different ways at synagogue. NYJW: Do you feel a lot of pressure since this is the first Broadway revival of Funny Girl and if so, how are you dealing with that? BF: I mean how could you not? I’d like to meet the person who wouldn’t be feeling the pressure. But I think I’d feel that way in any job. I hold myself to really high standards and I’m a perfectionist and I always want to do my absolute best. I’m unrelenting in that pursuit and I’m very focused and committed. I felt that way about Hello, Dolly! I feel that way about any opportunity. So then, of course, when you layer on the fact that I’m leading a Broadway show for the first time and then the fact that it’s Funny Girl, of course there’s added expectations and pressure, whatever word you want to use. But I think I just have to focus on my company of actors and our crew offstage and I think it’s such an extraordinary group of people. Whenever I get nervous, I look at Ramin [Karimloo], who plays Nick Arnstein, or I look at Jared [Grimes] who plays Eddie. I look at my incredible company of collaborators and I feel so safe. NYJW: Do you think because you know the original so well, does that make it easier or more difficult to make it your own? BF: In some ways I think I do and I don’t because I really know it through a child’s eyes. I think the last time I watched it was when I was a junior in college. My roommate and one of my dearest friends admitted she had never seen it and we watched it. But I haven’t seen it since then. I didn’t rewatch it between then and when I got the audition. And then, once I got the audition, I knew that I couldn’t watch it. I had to approach it as if it was brand new material, as if I was a person who was like what Funny Girl is about and I’ve never heard this song People before. I really tried to approach it like that because I knew that if I was going to do this, I had to do this my way and just bring my own bagelness, if you will, to the role. What I love so much about Fanny is she knows she can only be herself, so I knew in order to play the role I had to approach it that way.
Women This singing trio wants to make Yiddish sexy again Julia Gergely
(New York Jewish Week)—Like many great ideas, The Mamales, a Yiddish singing group, began on a summer night at a bar on the Lower East Side. The women who make up the trio, Maya Jacobson, Raquel Nobile, and Jodi Snyder, had gotten together for a night of fun and to reminisce about the 2018 production of Fiddler on the Roof (Fidler afn Dakh) at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, where they met as members of the cast. Jacobson had been listening to The Barry Sisters—a duo whose Yiddish covers were wildly popular in the mid20th century—and realized it was time for the next generation to carry on the tradition. “I heard The Barry Sisters’ version of Abi Gezunt and I knew I wanted to record this with these two, my favorite people and some of the best performers I know, and make a trio,” Jacobson, 25, told the New York Jewish Week. “I knew people in the Jewish community would be really into this. Yiddish is such huge part of Jewish culture stomped on by the Holocaust that is really being found again.” “We were just having a great time and dreaming out loud with each other,” Snyder, 28, recalls. “This project is coming at a time where we haven’t worked on a Yiddish project together in person in a while. I think we thought ‘why not dream big and try to make something for ourselves and have this passion project?’” Despite acting in Yiddish productions and singing Yiddish covers, none of the women speaks Yiddish fluently, though Jacobson braggs that she had a continuous 71-day streak in Yiddish on the language-learning app Duolingo. Nobile, an opera singer with Puerto Rican and Italian heritage, is not Jewish, but “fell in love with the Yiddish language and the culture” in 2017, when she started
performing with the Folksbiene. “I have a pretty good ear for it. It’s in my soul,” she says of the language.
As long as you’re living your life with joy, and as we all know in these times, as long as you’re healthy, you’ll be okay.”
Nobile, 30, was awarded the National Theater Conference’s Emerging Professional of 2018 for her work with the Folksbiene, where she’s also performed in Amerike: The Golden Land and The Sorceress. Snyder, almost straight out of Syracuse University at the time, earned laughs and glowing reviews as Fruma Sarah, the ghost who appears to Tevye and Golde in the dream sequence of Fiddler. To launch the project, the women started a GoFundMe page, with a goal to record and release a cover and music video of their rendition of Abi Gezunt. They raised $5,000 over the course of two months from donors around the country. “We’re constantly in disbelief by continued on page 24
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people’s generosity and excitement about this project,” Jacobson says. The music video premiered just in time for Passover. It’s delightful and funny and, as Jacobson notes, sexy too. “When I listened to the song I realized that it’s really sexy,” she explains. “I don’t normally think of Yiddish as being sexy, but it totally can be.” In the video, the three sing in Central Park, dressed as self-described “muppety, vaudevillian, mischievous, frumpy clowns,” who then transform into lounge singers hanging out and performing at a swanky bar, and back again. “The song translates to ‘As long as you’re well you can be happy,’” Jacobson explains. “The joy in performing is the through line between those two scenes, because as long as you’re living your life with joy, and as we all know in these times, as long as you’re healthy, you’ll be okay.”
The name of the group, The Mamales, is an homage to the 1938 Polish Yiddish film Mamele. It starred Molly Picon, “Second Avenue’s longest-reigning queen and the best-known Yiddish actress/singer later on Broadway,” according to the Milken Archive of Jewish Music. Picon wrote the lyrics for Abraham Ellstein’s melody and performed Abi Gezunt in the film, where it became an instant hit. The three don’t know what exactly is in store for them after the video launch, though they are eager to perform at JCCs, bnai mitzvah, synagogues, and other venues. Eventually, they hope to create a concept album with Yiddish covers and accompanying videos just like this one. “We’re hoping for nichely viral,” Jacobson jokes. “I hope it brings some joy and I hope that grandparents can share it with their grandkids and can show them how fun this language is. Because it’s a part of all of us.”