Modern Love: Mom: Mom# Is He Jewish?’ Me: ‘No.’ Mom: ‘Is He Smart/

Credit Brian Rea

After I first met John on a Manhattan dance floor, I called my mother, Selma, and told her that I’d begun seeing the most wonderful man. Selma was delighted and when I mentioned that John was a doctor, the phone all but glowed.

“Is he Jewish?” Selma asked. When I said no, there was a distinct pause. Then she asked, “Is he smart?”

Selma justifiably hated being labeled a Jewish mother, a cliché she found tiresome and demeaning. Jewish mothers are supposedly overprotective, demanding and obsessed with cleanliness, higher education and worldly success. While my mother dabbled in these areas, she was also an extraordinary individual, a woman devoted to poetry, dance, vigorous optimism, boldly patterned Marimekko dresses and a nice glass of vodka after dinner.

On occasion my mother could exhibit a healthy dose of, well, let’s call it idiosyncratic common sense. When I was growing up, long before gay marriage was even remotely possible, my mother’s friend Sue came out to her. Selma was thrilled on Sue’s behalf but still worried about future security. “Couldn’t Sue be a lesbian,” my mother had wondered aloud, “but still marry a rich man?”

She was radically progressive and accepting of gay lives. She worked as a publicist for a ballet company in Philadelphia and had more gay friends than I did. She once tormented me by asking if I’d hand deliver an envelope filled with photos of the company’s handsome male dancers. I was to carry this sealed parcel on the train from New York. Just before I left town, Selma called and casually mentioned, “Some of the photos are nudes.” And no, I didn’t open the envelope but I certainly cursed her.
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Modern Love
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She quickly came to adore John, both because he’s a terrific person and because she hoped to enlist him as a spy, supplying her with confidential data on my personal life. John, in the most good-natured