Surprisingly, these traits do not add up to a one-note Jewish caricature – a la Fran Drescher.  While The Nanny had all the emotional range of (err) a stuffed animal, Jill has the dexterity to  play both a stereotype and a complicated woman, one who cares deeply about her friends and family but often gets sidetracked by petty cat-fighting.  Jill, along with her sister Lisa Wexler and mother Gloria Kamen recently wrote Secrets of a Jewish Mother, a guide to motherhood that offers such overbearing, over-loving advice as: "If a lesson is worth teaching once, it is worth teaching at least two thousand times."

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Jill about Jewish motherhood, henna tattoos, and (hold your breath) the Real Housewives Reunion Special.

Thank you for chatting with me Jill. How did Bravo find you for the show?

They cold called me after seeing my photo on nysocialdiary.com. I then introduced them to Bethenny and Luann.

What happened next? Did you have a screen test?

They came to NY to film me for a "day in the life." Then I got a call 9 months later that the show was "green lit" and ready to go.

What is your biggest insecurity?

I don’t know if I could name just one! I am always trying to lose that last " 5-10" pounds. I am always insecure about how I look. 

Would you consider yourself socially ambitious?

I consider myself driven in life. I was taught to strive for excellence in everything I do.

Writer Ayelet Waldman once said that Jewish mothers have turned the entire Western world into Jewish mothers – that now everyone is guilty and overprotective.  Do you think this is true? Do you think "Jewish mothering" has spread virally across religious and cultural lines?

If it is true, it is a wonderful thing. The first thing we say in our book is that you don’t have to be Jewish to be a "Jewish Mother" and that is often maligned. We tried to demystify that "rumor" by explaining why being a "Jewish Mother" is a good thing, not a bad one. 

What differences have you observed between Ashkenazi and Sephardic mothers?

I asked my sister Lisa, co- author of Secrets and host of The Lisa Wexler Radio show for help on this one. Lisa has a good friend in Israel who married a Moroccan Jew, and, hence, has a Sephardic mother-in-law.  She believes very strongly in traditions such as celebrating every Shabbos with the entire family together around a large dining table. Also, she drew a henna design on the palm of Lisa’s friend’s hand the night before the wedding.  But essentially, all mothers want the same thing, wherever they come from.

You and your daughter Ally seem to have the most tenderhearted mother-child relationship on the show.  Has Judaism influenced your feelings about family?

Thank you for that compliment. Relationships are the most important thing in my life and we talk about that a lot in our new book "Secrets of  a Jewish Mother". Jewish people in general value parenting as the most important job a person can have.

There was a torrent of hits thrown at you at the reunion special.  How are you holding up?

I admit it was not the easiest day for me. Sometimes I look at it as a "job" and that helps me get through it. If not for the show, most of the relationships, good and bad, would not exist. We each have a different set of friends and are at different points in our lives. It is hard to be judged as a "friend" when in fact some of us only see each other when the cameras are rolling. For example, I only met the 2 newest housewives, Jen Gilbert and Sonja Morgan on "set". We had no history together. However, I have enjoyed meeting them both and hope to develop a friendship on and off camera in the future. 

Was it upsetting for Ally to watch?

Believe it or not, we really don’t talk about the show much. So many fans have written to her how much they love us, that it has been a good experience for her, not bad. She is co-president of www.teensturninggreen.org and is using her " celebrity" to promote Green Living. She is also involved in many charities that would otherwise not get attention.

Last question: If a movie was to be made about Jill Zarin, what would it be called?

That is easy. The connector!

The post Jewcy Interviews: Jill Zarin of “The Real Housewives of New York” appeared first on Jewcy.

The mother’s dream will most likely come true. It is in the secular Jewish tradition that 18 years or so following a female’s birth, the innocent baby girl will grow up and blossom into a NONDISCRIMINATORY WHORE. She will date black men and Evangelical Christian men and anti-Semitic men and Republican men, but this is all okay because she makes a promise to God she will one day ditch all these men and marry a Jew. Even so, the mothers become nervous. They might sign their daughters up for J-Date or might fantasize about Jewish characters from FOX TV programs fertilizing their daughters with charismatic fetuses. “Seth Cohen from the O.C.!” my mother cheered one Thursday night, as Seth pulled his neck skin at weird angles for the camera. “If that boy wasn’t designed by God Himself to be Rachel’s soulmate then I don’t know who was!” I remind my mother that Seth was pretty gay (“He is always eyeing that Ryan character with a creepy, plotting look in his eye.’”) and so my mother moved onto other unattainables. “David Copperfield, the magician! Now there’s a catch.”

I considered this for a moment. David fishing a killer shark through the left hole of my nostril, his magic wand guiding the motions! David twisting my face into fun Picasso shapes and forgetting his trusted spell to undo me! David abracadabraing my brain into the pit of my stomach and then back to my brain! And repeat! Naturally, I worried about the difficulties of filing a domestic abuse suit against a magician (“I understand that it was in the name of magic, your honor—but he still dissected my lung!”) and told my mother magician boys were not really my thing.

When I moved to New York last September, my mother continued her matchmaking long distance. She had heard the Matzah Ball, billed the largest Jewish singles event in the entire world would be reeling into town in a few weeks and demanded I attend. No, never, I told her. I was too young, too idealistic. I was a 23-year-old recent college grad who still dressed like a reckless teenager. Not a twice divorced Botox addict in the midst of a drawn-out custody battle over the German exchange student and the Tupperware. “I’d rather stick molten lava all over my face!” I yelled, stupidly. But it was too late. My mother had already signed me up and there was no way I could get a refund. I was officially a few short steps away from the American life cycle of wed, divorce, wed, divorce, wed, divorce. I walked into the Matzah Ball that fateful evening rolling my eyes, intolerantly. I quickly sauntered over to the bar area and asked the bartender to spike my drink with some general anesthesia. Strangely, he refused but agreed to prepare me a vodka cranberry. I drank it down in three gulps and scanned my periphery vision for any signs of intelligent life. There was none. There was, however, a lipless Israeli man brushing his sweaty hand against my back

“Hello little girl,” said the sweaty pervert, “You look like a nice American girl. Are you a nice American girl? “Sorry, I’m waiting for a friend,” I answered, staring devotedly at the floor. I spiraled the room for awhile and eventually fell into conversation with Jerry, a 28-year-old ad exec with big, soupy eyes and a wrap-around mouth. I suddenly had that sick feeling young Jews often get when they recognize someone they’ve seen on J-date in real life. This feeling is made even sicker when they remember said J-Dater was leaning princely against a splashy red cornvertible in his default pic. “So do you love sports as much as I do?” Jerry asked within seconds of meeting me, “Because I’m a crazy University of Florida basketball fan! Go Gators!” He pumped his fist towards the high heavens. “Goooooo Gators!” he reiterated. Gary bought me a drink and provided me with stunning insight into the dark, well-twisted corridors of his soul. “I don’t know about you but I’m a huge romantic and I’m looking for “the one.” One of my favorite things to do is not just to have sex, though I do love that, but to snuggle. Love to snuggle! And I think that says a lot about my character. You know, I’m just going to put it all out on the table. I’m 28. Ready to settle down. And I think my mother is ready for me to settle down as well.” Oh my God.  Please, here’s a knife, stab me.

It seemed every guy I had met that night had sworn under oath to their mothers they would return home from the event engaged (or laid, depending on their mother’s standards). It was a creepy feeling. The spirit of mothers all around you. A guy tells you you have a nice smile and all you can hear is a frizz-maned Jewish mother speaking through her nose, “Find out her ring size! For the sake of humanity, find out her ring size! The next morning, I called my mother to complain that Jerry had left three enthusiastic messages on my voicemail before 11:30 am. “It was like he was born out of some bent-up test tube that specializes in creating socially demented undesirables!” I cried. But my mother was not sympathetic. “Rachel, you don’t like anyone. You are not allowed to judge someone unless you have gone on at least one date with them!” "But Mom!" "Rachel…" "But Mom!" "Rachel…" "Fine!" Jerry picked me up from my house that night at 7:00 pm in a sulfur yellow station wagon that was not the car in his J-Date pic. The conversation sagged deeply from the beginning. “I hate cats,” I told him, because it was the first thing on my mind and I have a passion for nonsequitors, “I think all cats are evil and overly independent!” He stared at me darkly, “Um, have you ever even seen the look on a cat’s face after rescuing it from the top of a tree?” I hadn’t. I am a speciesist because I am ignorant because I am the unrehabilitated victim of the retrogressive Kentucky public school education system! “Well maybe if you got to know cats better before judging them you would know that they can be very vulnerable,” he shook his head three times, reflectively. “Very vulnerable” Jerry parked his car into a 7-11 parking lot and began raking his hand through my hair and neck. He whispered into my ear that he would never do anything but kiss me on the first date because he respected me and planned to be in a serious, exclusive relationship with me. With that, he grabbed my face by its sides and thrust his thick-veined tongue all the way down my digestive tract, probably into my respiratory tract as well. But it was still just a kiss. Jerry was a man of his word. “My mother raised me to be a good boy,” Jerry said lamely, “And I would never do anything to upset my mother.” Mother. The word wobbled in my brain for awhile, making me dizzy, delirious. “Mother other other eh eh eh,” I could hear Rhianna’s voice cooing from the radio that wasn’t turned on, “Under my mo-o-other other other eh eh eh eh eh eh.” “I have a wonderful surprise for you,” Jerry whispered, as he pulled into a neighborhood that looked suspiciously like the suburb. Outside the car window were trees smelling as fresh and tart as hippie cologne and birds chirping their sweet aviary catcalls at all those slut hummingbirds who were already nesting on, like, ten eggs each. Something told me we weren’t in Brooklyn anymore. “Rachel, what your little eyes are about to witness is the very town in Westchester where I grew up!” Jerry’s smile curled behind his gum-line. “Yay,” I said, blandly. I’ve noticed for awhile now that the homo sapien male will morph into this giant ADHD ball of excitement when given the chance to show off his hometown. "There’s the ol’ baseball field and there’s the ol’ pizza joint and there’s the ol’ homeless guy who has had that exact same crumb of dirt on his face for 23 years!” he will say. Luckily, Jerry’s tour of nostalgia was intercepted by a cell phone ringing in his jean pocket. The ring sounded louder and more urgent than it had been the rest of the night. Must be his mother, I thought. “Heya, mom!” Jerry clucked into the phone, “I’m in the car right now with that great girl I told you about! She just moved to New York from Kentucky. Yeah, she’s a real sweet girl. Jewish. Hmmm well, we are in the neighborhood …” Oh God. I have these phantom visions of hell that creep up on me sometimes when I am in strange situations. I’m sure this is normal. My hands are curved into handcuffs and a benighted hunk is dangling me by the legs into a fountain spiked with open-mouthed alligators. The heat is sucking every last bead of sweat from my dear sweat glands and there is nothing to breathe but carbon monoxide poisoning and— “Ouuuuur house!” Jerry sang operatically, waking me back to earth, “Is a very very very fine house. With two cats in the yaaaaard. Life used to be so haaaard.” I looked up and saw blurred sleepy colors of our car in a driveway and a woman flapping her arm at us in a window. Jerry? Jerry, where am I? What has become of me? Is that your mom? It was a surreal feeling, being plunked down into the worst hell in the universe, a kind of hell a few floors beneath hell.

“Please God” I prayed, “Just let me crawl back into the cozy little hell of my imagination, the one where I can trade close-fisted high fives with Axis of Evil VIPs and other friendly dictators. Please God.” God never did get back with me so I decided to try a less-noble strategy: lying.  As subtly as ever, I told Gary I suddenly had a killer migraine headache that may or may not lead to early death. “Seriously man, I feel like I am pregnant in my skull! Would you like to feel the baby kick in my skull?” I asked him. But Gary just stared at me with his sad canine eyes of his, which made me want to pet his arm hair. I petted his arm hair for exactly eleven minutes and he did the same for mine. He then drove me home in silence and we said our goodbyes like we meant them. Shalom. Adios. Auf Weidenshein. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya. Goodbye! From that date on, I decided I was done with los Jewish muchachos, was done with their grandchild-hungry mothers slipping marriage licenses into their coat pockets. From that date on, I would be doing all of my soul mate recruiting at the New York Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood.

Those guys, I figured, would not be bringing any nice Jewish girls home to meet their mothers on the first date.

The post The Matchmaking Gene appeared first on Jewcy.

Though her act is spoken word, Hidary’s shows go through all the usual motions of a song and dance number. She keeps a low center of gravity, her hips circulating her body and her arms cutting through the air, fingertips-first. She constantly alternates grace with sauce, as if she is a ballerina acting out a breakup scene with all the attitude left in. In her aptly-titled piece Hebrew Mamita, a man on a bar stool tells her she doesn’t look Jewish to which Hidary fires back, "What does Jewish look like to you? Should I fiddle on a fuckin’ roof for you?" Clearly, this is not the kind of poetry that can be left on a page, unperformed. Hidary wants her poetry to be heard, to reach high notes, to stop dead in dramatic pauses, to sink quickly into ear canals. And sink quickly they do, bungling almost every Jewish stereotype along the way. After a Hidary performance, the members of the audience will be praying that they never be left alone in a dark alley with someone who has two x-chromosomes and, heaven forbid, a decipherable ration of Jewish blood.

For the past few weeks, Hidary and I have been volleying emails back and forth, talking about identity politics, haters and the man who "fucked like Brooklyn."

RA: I like your name Hebrew Mamita.

VH: Thanks. People usually assume it’s a name coined from being part Latina and part Jewish. But I’m a Syrian/Ashkenazi Jew. I’m a Jewish girl who grew up around many Latinos and feel a connection to that community. And "Mamita" is a term of endearment, that I have heard my whole life. It made sense to put it with the "Hebrew." I like putting unique titles together, and more importantly, bringing people together. Something that gets people thinking and asking. In fact, right now, I’m about to be on a weekly radio show on UrbanLatino.com. My girl La Bruja heads a show called "Late Night Bru." I’m one of the sidekicks. My Hebrew Mamita segment will include a Shalom Alechim/Reggaton remix. If I can get one Jew a week to call in that would be an achievement! Here’s the plug: we launch November 16th at 8pm on Urbanlatino.com

RA: When did you become a spoken word artist?

VH: It was in 2000. I had been writing my own monologues for awhile and then I saw a Def Poetry Jam performance at The Brooklyn Museum and I knew this genre was for me.

RA: You were a Sephardic Jewish girl who grew up in a black and Hispanic neighborhood. 

VH: I would rather describe it as a very mixed neighborhood. Jews, Blacks, Latinos; this was in the 70’s, when the Upper West Side was not considered the upscale area it is now. My parents were public school-teaching, channel 13 tote bag-carrying liberal Jews, who took a chance investing property in what was then considered somewhat of a risky neighborhood. I always thought, growing up, that everyone lived like this. With Puerto Ricans knowing what lox was, and Jews drinking Malta. There are many of us from this area who know what I’m talking about and had similar experiences. I just felt a mission to write about it, and represent this very New York City experience. So I guess what I’m saying is that it is a "normal" experience. You just gotta be an old School New Yorker to get it.

RA: Can an artist still be an artist without experiencing an extreme, or at least, unique hardship?

VH: Yes, aren’t they called musical theatre performers? Kidding! Kinda. Am I gonna get hate mail for that? Sorry, they just seem pretty chipper to me.

RA: Does being a Syrian Jew give you more ethnic cred in the hip hop world than an Eastern European Jew?

VH: Nope. I don’t think most people in this country even know what a Sephardic Jew is. But that’s another article. And I’m half Ashkenazi so let me represent my Russian side too!

RA: Is there a history of spoken word in the Jewish tradition?

VH: I know we have always been great storytellers.

RA: In your piece, The Hebrew Mamita, you speak about Holocaust memory. Do you ever feel that as a Jewish artist you carry the "burden" or responsibility of talking about our rich, chronically tragic past?

VH: Not a burden. But a responsibility, yes. A vessel to carry along our story and our culture.

RA: You wrote about a man who fucked you like Brooklyn.

VH: Err, when someone else quotes my pieces it always sounds dirtier to me! Let’s just say nothing sounds better linguistically than Brooklyn. Do you think people would feel the power of something like, "He Fucked me Like Tribeca?" Okay, this subject is closed.

RA: Was anyone ever upset about the way they were represented in one of your pieces? Is it difficult to find the balance between being honest about the people in your life without throwing them to the lions?

VA: No. I disguise people very well. Or I just take them off my show mailing list. :)

RA: You’re performances are very rhythmic. How much does music influence your work? Which musicians?

VH: Hip- Hop , comedy, and theatre. A combo of the three are my recipe. I love Lauren Hill, Big Daddy Kane, The Beatles, Led Zepplin, Saturday Night Live, etc….

RA: Would you write your poetry differently if you were not going to perform it?

VH: Yes. Less wordy pieces for performances.

RA: Do you write better when you are calm or when you’re in a fit of passion?

VH: I don’t know this word "calm" you speak of.

RA: I’ve never experienced it either. Where do you write?

VH: Starbucks. I know, I know, it’s kinda capitalist and not unique and "artsy," but its close and when they see me coming they begin to make my drink. Big shout out to Josh, Luis, and Scarlet on 86th street! I can’t write at home. I’m too distracted.

RA: Tell me about your haters!

VH: Wow, am I popular enough to have haters? Well, I guess Hebrew Mamita haters would be those who think we should all live within cultural or racial boundaries. People who are like, ‘why is she calling herself Mamita when she’s not Latina?’ Or people who try to reduce my poems to "man bashing," or criticize me as a woman using "dirty" words, because it makes them uncomfortable. But in general I feel very blessed to get a lot of love from every race, gender and religion. I also think when you have any success, people quickly forget how much hard work one puts in. I’ve been producing, promoting, hosting and performing my own shows for years. Any success I’ve had had lots of sweat behind it. It kills me when I see someone in the game for a year and they’re whining about not getting paid.

RA: I’ve heard that it’s difficult for spoken word artists to understand what their audience is thinking. Musicians get applause. Comedians get laughs. But poets get more of a "Mmmmm." Is this difficult for you? Do you constantly have your audience on your mind when you’re performing?

VH: Hmmm, I don’t really see it that way. I feel I can feel and hear the response of my audience. I try not to think of them too much though. Every audience has its own personality.

RA: Do you think urban poetry could ever hit the mainstream?

VH: Well, Def Poetry Jam was the closest we ever got. I think if people are creative more things could develop. a reality show perhaps? Another "Slam" movie? But sometimes I think the art form is best when experienced live. Please come check out my show, The Culture Bandit Soul II, this Wednesday night at 8:00 pm at The Zipper Factory with another artist that breaks race boundaries, the amazing soul singer, Maya Azucena!

The post Oy Vez Como Va appeared first on Jewcy.

At the Metro Club in New Orleans, I was dancing with a law school student named Hendrik, who kept palming his way down the backside of my thighs.  Without hesitation, he told me he had been waiting all night to dance with a Jewish girl, especially one as "full-bred" as myself.  Oh God. Was it really that obvious? I wondered, reminding myself that if I would just stand 45 degrees to the left of guys, when speaking to them, that my nose would not seem nearly as obtrusive.  "You know, its so funny," Hendrik said, "My grandfather was a nazi officer but my dad and I, we absolutely love the Jewish people.  Especially the women.  Huge fans."

It was weird and not very smart of Hendrik to natter on about his Nazi-infested genes before even scoring my digits.  I liked his honesty though. I also liked how his shoulder muscles packed so nicely into his ski sweater and how his strong, steroidal voice would crunch all the way down to a creak whenever he tried to be romantic.  "Did anyone ever tell you that your hair is the exact same color as your eyes?" Creak.  Creak.  Creak.  He made me want to dig into his esophagus and slowly and tenderly caress his vocal chords.  But I–fortunately–held myself back. 

My first date with Hendrik was a stroll through the New Orleans French Quarter. Hendrik spoke with terrific emotion about ex-lovers, probably to make me jealous, but I didn’t really like him enough to mind.  There was Michelle Rosenthal with her nasal South Jersey whine; Mimi Moskowski who sported an unshaven hippie bush which Hendrik found endearing (though he did not find Mimi herself endearing); and Avivah Katz who used to bob her tongue into Hendrik’s earlobe in the back row of Temple Emanu El’s Friday night services. "It was just her way of saying ‘Shabbat Shalom," Hendrik insisted.  The list continued on with clunky Jewish last name after clunky Jewish last name, lots of bergs and ovitskys, very few vowels.  I could just picture the kid masturbating to a map of Israel every night.

One night, when Hendrik and I were enjoying our privacy outside an empty Café du Monde, Hendrik traced his finger along the curve of my nose as if it were as arousing as a breast.  I wanted to reroute his fingers to someplace-anyplace-sexier.  Look! Down below! There’s these fat, flowering 32D melons just above my ribcage, here, have a stroke!  Hendrik couldn’t hear my thoughts of course, and began to molest the bridge between my nostrils. I could practically hear him humming, "Ahhhh Juuudaism."

Trying to be heard over street music jazz, Hendrik said to me, "Um Rachel…sweetheart…would you mind singing a little Hebrew prayer for me? Please? Like the ‘Barak ata’ one? It gets me off.  I’m being serious." He laughed at this, appreciating his own sexual weirdness.  I sighed and whispered "baruch atah adonei eloheinu meleh ha’olam" into his ear in my slinkiest phone sex operator voice.  He fondled my nose again and I giggled.

I imagined Hendrik dreaming up various Jew-girl-on-Nazi-descendant storylines before he went to bed at night. 

Fantasy #1: The Jew girl, with her inky black eyes and teeth slanted shyly inwards (think Anne Frank) kisses goose-stepping boy atop Noah’s ark.  The only two humans left after the flood, the fate of humanity rests upon them to procreate (cue the urgent music).  Their limbs tangle about, arms becoming legs and legs becoming arms, they tangle about some more, the rhythm of the Mediterranean Sea eggs them on and then, suddenly-voila! The bible’s first-ever half Christian/half Jewish baby is conceived! 

While my feelings toward Hendrik never did approach love, I, in utter anti-feminist fashion, wanted him to love me.  But I wondered: could a guy nursing a fetish ever truly fall in love with his fetish girl? 

I doubt it. It seemed I could never be the object of Hendrik’s cosmic, chemicals gone haywire, rocket-fire love because I was the object of Hendrik’s typecasting.  Hendrik was casting for his real-life Noah’s Ark Jewess and I was the one who best fit the bill.

A few weeks after I began dating Hendrik, I went through a serious Dolly Parton phase, perhaps in rebellion to all the pretentious snot clogging up my college campus. I wrote country songs and performed them before my full-length mirror and my roommate, who promised not to judge.  I wore cowboy boots and peroxided my hair so blonde it washed all the Jewish character out of my face.

I e-mailed Hendrik a digital picture of the new me labeled "Just as Hitler ordered" and I expected at least some kind of half-pleasure to come out from under him; maybe he would call me his "sexy little Barbara Streisand" or he would tell me gently that I looked very hot but that he wanted his Jew back. I just assumed that all guys, even the most Jew-chasing among them, were turned on by blonde.  I thought it an evolutionary thing.

For a good few hours, I stared, autistic-like, at my computer until an instant message from bodyofgod937 popped up on the screen: "Call me when you have better judgement" is all it said.  My better judgement told me that I should take Hendrik’s number out of my cell phone and that I should have listened to my mother in the first place and only date nice Jewish boys.  Jewish boys, after all, would never pass up on a good shiksa.

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