I honestly don’t think it has anything to do with theology. It’s a purely cultural trope based on the stereotype of the overbearing Jewish mom manipulating her sons - who is not a figure created by the theology, though I suppose some Biblical figures had overbearing moms.
It is linked to Judaism as a culture, not necessarily the religion.
Why is the pervasive guilt thing not extended to Jewish women marrying out?
a) because Jewishness officially goes thru the mother, ie, no net loss of potential Jews?
b) because the common wisdom says it never happens?
I know it’s b) in the movies and on TV. What about IRL?
Some Holocaust/Stalinist purge survivors & descendants, along with their personal separation fears, fear the loss of Jewish identity through intermarriage. However if the mother is Jewish, the children will still be considered Jewish. If only the father is Jewish, they won’t be considered Jewish except in some namby pamby* Reform sects, which the Jewish Mother is very unlikely to subscribe to.
Hence the great fear of sons marrying non-Jews.
*JOKING.
It also has to do with the immigrant experience - trying to keep your kids tied to the Old World’s customs and values as they become more attuned to the New World’s. Think of movies like The Jazz Singer - “My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight,” the rabbi father says, “but now I have no son.”
This is the reason we hear that stereotypical Jewish mother’s voice in a “New York Jewish”- ie, Eastern European/Yiddish - accent. She was likely first or second generation American herself. That whole culture is virtually gone and Jews are almost completely assimilated (and often have been for a couple generations). If a little of the “Jewish guilt” phenomenon lingers on, it’s likely fast disappearing. After all, the whole lynchpin of Jewish guilt - making your kid marry another Jew - apparently doesn’t hold much weight, as Jewish interfaith marriages are through the roof. It’s not surprising that a 23-year old wouldn’t even know what Jewish guilt means.
Another thing to toss out there, harkening back to the Holocaust survivor thing, is that many, if not most of the survivors had incredibly forceful personalities, which were huge factors in their survival. This is where the “overbearing” part comes in.
My grandmother used to sneak out of the Lodz ghetto, to “pass” as aryan (like me, she had fair skin and red hair) in order to get food and necessaries for her family. Had she been discovered she would be immediately executed.
You think a person who will risk getting shot on sight for the sake of keeping her family together, is scared of you thinking she is mean? Oh, hell no.
I would also conjecture that the idea of Jewish guilt has split off from religion and become part of the heritage of secular Jews. There is a strong ethical/moral vein even in that culture, and there’s also a drive to be reflective. Where you find those things, you’ll find guilt to contend with - and often in very subtle and opaque ways.
I’d say it has little to do with that, and more to do with the (allegedly) close (not to say stifling) and passive-aggressive relationships that Jewish moms are alleged to have with their sons.
Same reason all the jokes are about the moms trying to force their sons to become doctors or lawyers, or to call them more often, etc.
The jokes are invariably about Jewish moms guilting their sons, and the “marrying out” is only a tiny subset of topics that the guilting is supposed to be about.
As to why this should be so, I do not know.
I disagree that this in the “lynchpin”. As many, if not more, Jewish guilt jokes are “about” making your kid choose an approved career (doctor or lawyer).
A Jewish teenager opens a Hanukah gift from his mother. It’s two neckties - a red one and a blue one. He says “Oh thank you so much Mom! These are wonderful! I love them!” He runs upstairs, and comes down in a few minutes wearing a dress shirt and the blue tie. His mother says,
“You don’t like the red one?”
Grandma was a pretty good example of Jewish guilt. Example: I called her one day, back when I was in high school, just to say hello. “Hi, Grandma! It’s NinjaChick. How are you?” “Oy, NinjaChick, you never call me, it’s so nice to hear from you!” “Grandma, I talk to you every weekend!” “Yes, but you don’t call, your dad hands you the phone.”
Anyway. I always assumed it wasn’t meant to be a true guilt thing, but a ‘you damn well better live the best life you can, and that includes keeping your family close’ thing. She was a first-generation American, born and raised in New York. She came of age during the depression, but still had things pretty easy compared to how her parents had grown up in Eastern Europe. And then when she was settling down and starting a family, things were starting to get really bad for Jews in Europe. So I think part of it was kind of a “It can’t truly be this good; there must be a catch” reaction to how comparatively good American Jews had it. To see the next generation not take family as seriously, or not feel the need to establish themselves as a Successful Jew (which may have seemed against the odds to Grandma, but certainly not to me), was just baffling, therefore, the guilt talks.
ETA: I’m also pretty convinced that a look at Jewish history…well, it’s pretty much “They enslaved us, we escaped, they tried to kill us, we fought back and barely won, they tried to outlaw our religion, we fought back and barely one, they tried to kill us but we fought back, they sent soldiers to destroy our towns and we fought back, they forced us off our land, they called us evil and we fought back or ran, they outlawed our religion, they rounded us up into camps and quite literally tried to kill us all, and now here we are today,” the entire way, so…I can see where the guilt might come from.
Regarding Catholic guilt, besides Original Sin, there’s also the sacrament of Reconciliation. A good Catholic is expected to go frequently to Reconciliation and confess their sins. Where “Catholic guilt” comes into this is the idea that you are constantly sinning and must cleanse yourself frequently. When I was a teenager, I started rebelling against this.
“I’m not going to Reconciliation,” I told my mother, “I haven’t committed any sins!”
“Yes, you have!” she responded.
“No, I haven’t! Name one sin I have done this week.”
In response, she handed me, and I am serious about this, what was basically the Big Book of Catholic Sins. It was a book listing all the sins you could possibly commit. I gather it was a tool you could use to help you prepare for Reconciliation, so you would know what sins to confess. It backfired against her though, as I discovered a whole bunch of major sins SHE had committed.
“It says here that it is a sin to associate with non-Catholics. What about all your Buddhist and Muslim friends? And you MARRIED a Jew! Oh, you are going straight to Hell.”
It sounds a lot like the Lutheran guilt Garrison Keillor keeps talking about. It seems a pretty standard trope that comedians have about their own religion no mater what religion it is.
One of my father’s brothers, some years ago, had a girlfriend who Grandma hadn’t met yet.
“Why haven’t you brought her around to meet me yet? Are you ashamed of her or something?”
“No, Ma. Of course not!”
“Then…you must be ashamed of me.”
“Ma!”
True story. Paraphrased a bit, but true.
I miss my Grandma. She was a hoot.
If she’s not scared of you thinking she’s mean, why is she scared that you’re going to abandon her if you don’t call every day or marry a shiksa or something, though?
Because the last time she was separated from members of her family, 85% of them ended up murdered.
At least the Catholic guilt is based on keeping with some sort of religious/ethical code. The “Jewish guilt” seems to just come from parents being annoying, nagging assholes who dominate their kids.
I’m glad I never had any experience with this phenomenon.
Wow, Great answer. You know it really puts it in perspective.
Loved the stories and jokes you all posted.
Well, there’s another joke that Lutherans are “Catholic lite,” especially in rural Minnesota, where Keillor is from and where Prairie Home Companion is set.
Growing up in rural MN, our small-town culture was pretty much that there were two religions: Catholic and Lutheran. The difference between the two was that Catholics believed in literal transubstantiation, and Lutherans believed it to be symbolic. And that was pretty much it.
Well, there’s also that Pope thing.
Seriously, I’ve been to both Catholic and Lutheran masses in Minnesota, and if it wasn’t for the signs outside the bulidings, I wouldn’t have known which was which.
Didn’t you grow up in Indiana though? Hardly a hotbed of American Judaism. I knew only a a handful of Jewish people growing up in Alabama but between undergrad and law school in Florida and ten plus years as a lawyer in Atlanta* I have seen more than a few exemplars of the stereotypes.
*perhaps on of the most thriving American Jewish communities outside of New York