Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Food

Jewish Mothers Who Can Cook — in Six Words

For many of us, Jewish mothers are synonymous with home cooking. In advance of Mother’s Day, we asked you, our readers, to describe your Jewish mothers in just six words. Not surprisingly, sprinkled throughout the submissions were many entries dedicated to moms as the ultimate cooks. Sure, there was the requisite Jewish mom joke: “Sad? Eat! Tired? Eat! Test? Eat!” but other entries surprised us with their creativity and proved just how tight the link between Jewish moms and food really is.

Below are some of our favorite entries dedicated to our moms who cooked for us, forced us to eat gefilte fish and proved that you can cook kugel and be a skilled lawmaker.

Balaboosta, The kitchen wizard and genie.
— Elliot Lewis, 34, Albuquerque, about Sonia Gottlieb

Makes best chopped liver; will travel.
— Bryna Siegel Finer, 36, Pittsburgh, about Marcia Siegel

Has more balls than matzoh balls.
— Lauren Rosen, 42, New York City, about Doris Rosen

Forced me to eat gefilte fish
— Lauren Rosen, 42, New York City, about Doris Rosen

Candidate Mom serves kugel creates laws
— Francine Graff, 49, Culver City, Calif., about Loretta Weinberg

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.