How to Be a Jewish Mother is a 1964 Jewish humor book by American humorist Dan Greenburg which was the best-selling non-fiction book in the United States in 1965, with 270,000 copies sold.Hackett, Alice Payne. Seventy years of best sellers, 1895-1965, p. 227 (1967)The Bookseller ("Non-Fiction. The bestseller of the year in non- fiction was a book called How to Be a Jewish Mother, by Dan Greenburg")Bernstein, Fred A. The Jewish Mothers' Hall of Fame (chapter on Leah Greenburg and the book) (1986) The book was first published by Price Stern Sloan under publisher Larry Sloan.
The book was adapted into a play starring Molly Picon and Godfrey Cambridge which had a brief run on Broadway at the Hudson Theater from December 1967 through January 1968.Battaglio, Stephen. David Susskind: A Televised Life, p. 251 (2010)(29 December 1967). Theater: 'How to Be a Jewish Mother'; Molly Picon Stars With Godfrey Cambridge, The New York Times The actress Gertrude Berg was preparing for the main role in the play but died during pre-production.
The play was profiled in the William Goldman book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway.
A 1983 French adaptation, Comment devenir une mère juive en 10 leçons, met with long-running success.(10 March 2001). Une mère juive joyeuse et drôle, Le Parisien (in French)(6 October 2004). Comment devenir une mère juive...., lemagazine.info (in French) Gertrude Berg also released a best-selling comedy album from the book in 1965.
It was re-issued as a mass-market paperback in 1991 (, ).
It is deemed as a book that reinforced the stereotype of the Jewish mother in American culture. The anthropologist Jonathan Boyarin qualified the book a "work of covert anti-Semitism".
References
External links (archive)