Nearly every Jewish person has experienced it at some point: a mother or a bubbe’s subtle twist of words that somehow always get you to do something you haven’t planned—Jewish guilt. Stereotype or not, for many of us, this is an inherent truth.
We can hear it in our mother’s sad voices: “Oh, you’re not coming home for Thanksgiving this year? Oh…okay…I guess I’ll cancel the order for the turkey…”
Or in the words of moms who lay it on thick: “I labored with you for 56 hours and you can’t even return a phone call?”
It might make us feel like terrible sons, daughters and grandkids, but one thing’s for sure—Jewish guilt almost always works.
At 8 months pregnant, I’d like to think that I won’t be the kind of mother that will make her son feel guilty. Maybe I’ll get lucky and he’ll just be the kid who remembers to call—who wants to come home for Thanksgiving. But then again, I have been making a mental list of all that this little person has already put me through:
- The sciatica
- The heartburn
- The sleepless nights
- The swollen hands and feet
- The stretch marks
- The leg cramps
And I know it’s only going to get worse. I have even more sleepless nights to look forward to. The crying. The pooping. The whining. The worrying. So then I think, maybe there is something to this Jewish guilt. Maybe it’s important for my son to know just how much I wanted him (because of all I suffered bringing him into this world).
I’m practicing Jewish guilt on my husband already. I complained enough about how much my back hurts when I clean the house that I’m pretty sure he’s hired a maid for my first Mother’s Day.
And speaking of this Sunday, don’t you have someone you need to remember? She only carried you around for 9 months, clothed and fed you for 18 years, and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in college tuition after all. What’s one little phone call?
