{"id":50633,"date":"2019-09-04T00:25:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T06:25:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=50633"},"modified":"2023-12-06T12:49:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T17:49:11","slug":"op-ed-how-valerie-harpers-rhoda-embodied-a-very-jewish-type","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/op-ed-how-valerie-harpers-rhoda-embodied-a-very-jewish-type\/","title":{"rendered":"OP-ED: How Valerie Harper\u2019s Rhoda embodied a very Jewish type"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL<\/p>\n<p>(JTA) \u2014 Theater folk in England are debating a recent revival of the musical \u201cFalsettos,\u201d asking whether non-Jews should be playing its Jewish characters. In an open letter, critics of the religion-blind casting complain that non-Jewish actors can at best portray only a \u201csecondary understanding\u201d of Jewish mannerisms but have no awareness of the \u201cpsychology, geography, culture and history that have framed these outward signifiers of Judaism.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_50634\" style=\"width: 239px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50634\" class=\"wp-image-50634 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-229x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-768x1006.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-782x1024.jpg 782w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974.jpg 1094w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 229px) 100vw, 229px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 229px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 229\/300;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50634\" class=\"wp-image-50634 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-229x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"229\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-229x300.jpg 229w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-768x1006.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974-782x1024.jpg 782w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Valerie_Harper_1974.jpg 1094w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 229px) 100vw, 229px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-50634\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern (Photo from CBS Television via Wikimedia UK)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>To the perennial debate over whether non-Jewish actors can or should play Jews, I have a two-word answer: \u201cRhoda Morgenstern.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Valerie Harper, who died last week at age 80, starred in \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show\u201d as the earthy, wise-cracking, Bronx-born neighbor and best friend of the WASPy, reserved, carefully coiffed TV producer played by Moore. She was so convincing as Rhoda that many viewers had a hard time believing that Harper herself was not Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cListen,\u201d she would tell such fans, according to her 2013 memoir \u201cI, Rhoda,\u201d \u201cin my heart, I\u2019m Jewish. And if you go back far enough, we\u2019re all Jewish. The Jews are an ancient people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the history of that people, Jews always served as a convenient foil for gentiles, a tradition that began&nbsp; with the Gospels and continued in \u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show,\u201d which debuted in 1972. Rhoda was Mary\u2019s opposite, in looks and temperament. Considered plump only by the body-shaming perspective of a television sitcom, she envied Mary\u2019s figure and her poise, but also served Mary by helping her shed some of her Midwestern reserve. Her Jewish neuroses balanced Mary\u2019s gentile insecurity. She said out loud what Mary had a hard time admitting to herself. She threw Mary\u2019s character into high relief, and Mary returned the favor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re talking about Midwestern love. I\u2019m talking about Bronx love,\u201d Rhoda tells Mary in season 1.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a certain amount of guilt that goes with that. My mother wants the people she loves to feel guilty.\u201d<br \/>\nHarper was very much aware of how Rhoda\u2019s Jewishness informed her relationship with Mary. Describing her character, she once said in an interview, \u201cAll I could do was, not being as pretty, as thin, as accomplished, was: \u2018I\u2019m a New Yorker, and I\u2019m going to straighten this shiksa out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_50635\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50635\" class=\"wp-image-50635 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974-300x234.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"234\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974-300x234.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974.jpg 690w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/234;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50635\" class=\"wp-image-50635 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974-300x234.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"234\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974-300x234.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Mary_and_Rhoda_1974.jpg 690w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-50635\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards and Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern. (Photo from CBS Television via Wikimedia)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThe Mary Tyler Moore Show\u201d is remembered as a feminist breakthrough in television, depicting women who were single and career-minded and not defined only by their relationship to the men in their lives. The Rhoda character was groundbreaking too: the first Jewish leading character on TV, Neal Gabler reminds us, since Gertrude Berg starred as Molly Goldberg on CBS from 1949 to 1951.<\/p>\n<p>And just as Mary represented a soft feminism, Rhoda represented soft ethnicity: Although her Jewishness was rarely made explicit (except perhaps for that last name, which the protagonist of Herman Wouk\u2019s 1955 novel \u201cMarjorie Morningstar\u201d had shed in the name of assimilation), her outward Jewish signifiers were apparent.<\/p>\n<p>This has earned the show\u2019s creators both praise and criticism. Marlene Marks wrote in the Jewish Journal in 1991 that Rhoda proved \u201cthere was more to the Jewish woman than the stereotype. She was not a princess. She was not a shrew. Yes, she was an underdog, but not a loser.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, a character in a Francine Prose short story, \u201cElectricity,\u201d is described as \u201cassimilated to the point of Jewishlessness, like Valerie Harper playing Rhoda.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But her Jewishness was nonetheless out there, by the standards of the day, no more so than in the season 2 episode titled \u201cSome of My Best Friends Are Rhoda.\u201d Mary makes a new friend, Joanne, leaving Rhoda feeling snubbed. The friendship sours, however, when Joanne invites Mary to a club that prohibits Jews, and Mary defends Rhoda.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_50636\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50636\" class=\"wp-image-50636 size-medium lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-300x237.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-300x237.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-768x606.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-1024x808.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977.jpg 1406w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 300px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 300\/237;\" \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-50636\" class=\"wp-image-50636 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-300x237.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"237\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-300x237.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-768x606.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977-1024x808.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Rhoda_and_Ida_1977.jpg 1406w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-50636\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern and Nancy Walker as her mother Ida. (Photo from CBS Television via Wikimedia)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>When CBS spun off the character for Harper\u2019s own show, \u201cRhoda,\u201d some of her recognizably Jewish attitude didn\u2019t survive the transition. Although she moves back to New York and gains a stereotypically Jewish mother, Rhoda herself sheds some of her Jewish tics (and more than a few pounds). The ethnic burden, like many of the best lines, was given to Julie Kavner as her younger sister, Brenda.<\/p>\n<p>When Rhoda marries \u2014 more than 50 million viewers tuned in for the episode \u2014 the fact that her husband isn\u2019t Jewish is barely treated as a plot point. Maybe that\u2019s why so few Jews objected to this much-hyped portrayal of interfaith marriage, especially compared to the communal conniption fit that greeted \u201cBridget Loves Bernie,\u201d an intermarriage sitcom from just a few years earlier. Rhoda left her Jewishness, along with her best friend, back in Minnesota. And for anyone who has never felt more Jewish than when they leave the Jewish \u201cghettos,\u201d that\u2019s a familiar feeling.<\/p>\n<p>In the absence of positive expressions of Judaism \u2014 ritual, language, dress and what the sociologists call \u201cpropinquity\u201d \u2014 ethnic Jewishness only becomes apparent in the things that we are not: New York, not Minnesota; loud, not reserved; carnal, not buttoned up; wittily self-deprecating, not morbidly self-lacerating. It was how a rapidly assimilating Jewish community began to think of what it meant to be Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>Rhoda wasn\u2019t the first Jewish character to be understood in contradistinction to the non-Jews with whom she shared a stage. But never before was that stage so large, nor the character so delightful.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"OP-ED%3A%20How%20Valerie%20Harper%E2%80%99s%20Rhoda%20embodied%20a%20very%20Jewish%20type\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7139,22],"tags":[10180,8790,8795,10181,10182,8788,2164],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50633"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78387,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50633\/revisions\/78387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}