![\"Tovah](\"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Screen-Shot-2021-07-22-at-12.44.08-PM-229x300.png\")
![\"Liba](\"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Screen-Shot-2021-07-22-at-12.45.38-PM-266x300.png\")
<\/p>\nTOVAH FELDSHUH uses the word mensch a lot. I had always associated the term with men\u2014it does mean \u201cman\u201d in German\u2014but it\u2019s a word that has entered the American vernacular. It even appears as the Hanukkah \u201cMensch on a Bench\u201d toy, a Jewish response to the goyish \u201cElf on a Shelf.\u201d The Mensch is a stuffed bearded man who sports a white and blue tallit. Apparently it\u2019s his job to sit and smile at the menorah.<\/p>\n
Feldshuh doesn\u2019t sit much, and her use of the term is accordingly more active. \u201cI don\u2019t know enough Hebrew or enough Yiddish to qualify gender here, but to me, a mensch is a fully formed human being who is awakened. Like the Dalai Lama is a mensch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about Joe Biden?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMensch. He has empathy!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRBG?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTotally.\u201d<\/p>\n
I first experienced Feldshuh\u2019s unique brand of menschiness in a bright rehearsal studio in midtown in January 2019, when we were both cast in \u201cThe Soap Myth\u201d by Jeff Cohen, starring Ed Asner\u2014another man she names a mensch\u2014as a cantankerous Holocaust survivor. Feldshuh played the conservative museum scholar and charismatic Holocaust denier to my susceptible Jewish journalist trying to distinguish between history and mythology.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Feldshuh is a sprite at 68, with two Emmy awards and four Tony nominations, including one for her portrayal of Golda Meir in \u201cGolda\u2019s Balcony,\u201d the longest running one-person show in Broadway history; it opened at the Helen Hayes Theater on October 15, 2003 and ran for 14 previews and 493 performances. She\u2019s known also for her television work, particularly her roles as Deanna Monroe on \u201cThe Walking Dead\u201d and Helena Slomova in \u201cHolocaust.\u201d I thought she looked like my mom.<\/p>\n
I remember peering over her shoulder at her script, which was re-typed with her lines reformatted. \u201cI architecturally arrange the lines according to thought patterns,\u201d she later explained to me. Backstage, she crooned lullabies to her newest grandchild over the phone and typed up bits and pieces of a memoir with her hair in rollers.<\/p>\n
Since life so often imitates art, I recently followed Feldshuh around for two hours in Central Park in the windy days following the second pandemic Pesach, a white binder in one hand and in the other a hardcopy of that memoir, Lilyville<\/em>, published this past April by Hachette Books. Lilith\u2019s Joan Roth joined us to photograph. (I tower over these two tiny Jewish icons in height only.)<\/p>\n Feldshuh is\u2014by both gendered and un-gendered definitions\u2014 a woman known as a mensch. While younger viewers tend to recognize her as Rebecca Bunch\u2019s overbearing but endearing mother in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, her career of playing iconic women in Judaism began decades ago as a defiant Jewish daughter. She played the eponymous Yentl in the original 1974 Broadway production of the adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer\u2019s story of a young woman who dresses as a man to study Talmud at yeshiva. All this was before Barbra Streisand created the film version.<\/p>\n Feldshuh describes Yentl as \u201ca young woman who is driven to sacrifice her feminine identity in order to follow her passion to study Torah.\u201d The story itself is a kind of prophetic and loving warning: in a segregated Jewish society, women\u2019s spirituality is equal in name only as long as the portals to holiness and the relationships to G-d are maintained by and for men. I honor Feldshuh\u2019s note in Lilyville<\/em> by using her spelling: \u201cthis non-Kosher-keeping first-time author has chosen to refer to the Being Upstairs as G-d.\u201d<\/p>\n Singer was, obviously, no stranger to these internal dilemmas. Whatever it was that made Yentl cut her hair and devote herself to texts, similarly drew Feldshuh to the play, even though she had already committed to playing Amy in the revival of the musical \u201cWhere\u2019s Charley.\u201d Then the audition for \u201cYentl\u201d arrived. She fell in love with the \u201cmotherless boy\/girl\u201d who navigated the complications of self-actualization as a product of identity and expectation.<\/p>\n The gender segregation that Yentl faces wasn\u2019t unfamiliar to Feldshuh. The character confronts the uncomfortable illusion of access as the lone woman praying inside a fraternity of power; Yentl was not fooled by the sly idol switch of misdirection when women are praised only as the bearers of children, an expense that traditionally came at the cost of their internal and intellectual lives. In order to have it all, she became someone who could. Feldshuh had her own iteration of this question and a similarly blunt answer: how do a Jewish mother who believes you can\u2019t have it all and a Jewish daughter who lives like she can get along? \u201cThey don\u2019t.\u201d Better to be a mensch.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did I write a book? Because I was asked,\u201d Feldshuh quips. She then explains: \u201cThe book is written not as a celebrity biography.\u201d In the \u201cProgram Note\u201d to Lilyville<\/em>, which she intentionally wrote in a theatrical three-act structure, she invites the reader into the \u201ctheater of memories,\u201d in particular her memories of her mother, Lillian Kaplan Feldshuh, a reticent, fault-finding woman who bloomed in widowhood. Looking back, Feldshuh wondered: \u201cWhy don\u2019t I see my life through the lens of my mother? And my mother\u2019s life through my lens? \u2026 Everybody is a child.<\/p>\n They may not be a parent, but everybody is a child.\u201d In Lilyville<\/em>, Feldshuh touches on everything from knowing \u201chow to make an entrance\u201d\u2014a.k.a. being born\u2014to changing her name from Terri Sue to Tovah, to the dark empty days when she moved to Hollywood (she\u2019s back in New York City for a reason). Her attention to detail reflects a profound sensitivity: in a particularly touching moment, at 11 years old, she recounts the day she started her period. Her mother salutes her\u2014\u201cThis is wonderful. You are developing just as you should\u201d\u2014and openly refuses to engage in the Eastern European tradition of welcoming her daughter to womanhood with a slap. Her father, Sidney Feldshuh, came home that night with a bouquet of roses and a loud exclamation: \u201cCongratulations on becoming a woman! This is a moment to remember!\u201d A quiet courtesy from her mother, Kotex mysteriously appeared later, next to the flowers.<\/p>\n Obviously Feldshuh isn\u2019t embarrassed. Of anything. As joggers ran by, she described the morning of her father\u2019s death: Sidney died on May 11, 1996. Her mother arrived to the hospital in the morning in the diamond rings and choker pearls he had given her. In what Feldshuh describes as a moment of profound elegance, her mother kissed the genital area over the sheets, and said: \u201cThank you for my life. Thank you for my children.\u201d Five minutes into our walk, she stated bluntly: \u201cMy mother never told me she loved me. Obviously I asked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat did she say when you asked?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Of course I love you. Who takes you to your voice lessons and to Hebrew school?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Feldshuh chronicled those quieter years in her book: \u201cI had to create a whole artificial universe to keep me company because of the silence from the Lily bird.\u201d No one was more surprised than Feldshuh when her mother burst into a \u201cdazzling Technicolor\u201d after her father\u2019s death\u2014\u201cso when I thought no one would be by my side, there was my mother\u201d who finally stopped fixing her. \u201cI was a person of words and she was a person of deeds, and we learned from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Feldshuh\u2019s own character emerges when she talks about her transition to motherhood and how quickly it reflects back on her work onstage, and the other way around. Before Lily opened up to her daughter, Feldshuh cites a different mother\u2019s lesson. \u201cMy greatest mother before I sorted things out with mine was Uta Hagen,\u201d the highly influential acting instructor who originated the role of Martha in Edward Albee\u2019s \u201cWho\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf\u201d in 1962, and Feldshuh\u2019s teacher.<\/p>\n \u201c[Uta] would see terrible work, cockeyed work, and she\u2019d say \u2018That\u2019s interesting. Why don\u2019t we try it this way?\u2019\u201d Feldshuh laughs. \u201cThat\u2019s how I learned to coach soccer. \u2018Coach, coach! I made a goal. I made a goal with my elbow!\u2019 And I\u2019d say \u2018That\u2019s interesting! Wait a minute! I have an idea! Why don\u2019t we try with your foot?<\/em>\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Every time Feldshuh Mentions her mother as we walk through the park, she channels her. She knows Lily\u2019s words by heart. She\u2019s off-book, but it\u2019s not a performance, it\u2019s a manifestation. When Feldshuh started dating an objectively lovely Jewish entertainment lawyer, a man 14 years her senior, with air conditioning in New York City in August, Lily pulled her into the utility room and said \u201cYou\u2019re not going to marry that old stick-in-the mud, are you? At best, you\u2019ll wind up as a nurse with a purse, and at worst, you\u2019ll be a young widow.\u201d<\/p>\n In Lilyville<\/em>, Feldshuh describes how she landed the role of a sagacious Jewish grandmother (also coincidentally named Lillian) in the acclaimed 1999 film A Walk on the Moon that starred Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen. Feldshuh phoned Lily after the audition to tell her that Feldshuh volunteered to read out loud the \u201cbackstory [she] had written for the character.\u201d The surprised artistic team agreed, and Feldshuh proceeded to read Lily\u2019s diaries. Lily interrupted to call her daughter a goniff (Yiddish for \u201cthief\u201d), but Feldshuh plundered on: \u201cThen I took off my sweater and flipped the fat under my left arm, the way I used to play with yours.\u201dIt turned out Lily didn\u2019t mind being looted when Feldshuh booked it: \u201cThen you should bring me to auditions more often.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going in, Joan, I’m going in\u201d she calls out and rushes into the tulips, turning back with book in hand and a broad smile.<\/p>\n Without theater in Covid-19 times, Feldshuh has remained busy. \u201cWhat is the greatest pastime for an artist that wants to keep going? Writing.\u201d And what has it been like to be cooped up with her husband? \u201cI am married to a paid paranoid. A great lawyer sees 50 aspects of every problem\u2026 and he\u2019s been practicing law for over 50 years. We met Covid-19 slightly differently\u2014I got Covid-19, and he didn\u2019t.\u201d Together, though, they\u2019ve run 52 Zoom Shabbats. \u201cMargaret Mead says you marry one man\u2014in my case, one man, I happen to be a practicing heterosexual\u2014 you can marry one man several different ways or you can marry several men the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n As the pandemic eases, she has her eye on the horizon, a new role in Mark St. Germain\u2019s \u201cBecoming Dr. Ruth\u201d at North Coast Rep\u2014ever hopeful, she quips, \u201cif the fates are with me, I\u2019ll be playing two Ruths.\u201d Before the pandemic, she played Ruth Bader Ginsberg in \u201cSisters in Law\u201d at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Artsin Los Angeles. She still has RBG\u2019s spirit on her shoulder when the conversation turns to feminism: \u201cAs RBG said, I had to teach nine justices\u2014and I say nine penises\u2014that gender inequality existed. What they saw as a pedestal, I knew was a cage.\u201d<\/p>\n With Dr. Ruth Westheimer, whom she\u2019s shadowing these days, Feldshuh\u2019s interested in her smile (or lack thereof). \u201cThe smile is not an easy give\u2014that\u2019s the insight of an artist with a brain. It costs something\u2026 that\u2019s the key to her bravery.\u201d Feldshuh cares for and carries these women, whether fictional or not, with her. There\u2019s a kind of spirituality to the way she absorbs the characters she plays by accessing their humanity and harnessing their wisdom. How does Feldshuh find her way into her characters? \u201cYou look for coincidence. Where is the cellular coincidence?\u201d<\/p>\n I asked her what all these Jewish women she has played have in common? Besides her? Golda Meir, Dolly Levi, Noami Bunch, Yentl, the Ruths\u2026 \u201cThere is a word in German that Ruth [Westheimer] uses\u2026 stehaufm\u00e4nnchen\u2026 check the spelling! It\u2019s those clown dolls\u2014Joe Palooka dolls\u2014we used to have in the \u201850s. When you push them down, they pop right back up. That\u2019s one thing they have\u2014they are able to withstand the \u2018no\u2019.\u201d There it is again: the mensch. I did check the spelling. And the definition. Stehaufm\u00e4nnchen is someone who always bounces back.<\/p>\n Even Feldshuh\u2019s outfit reflects another woman she carries within her; she sports a rehearsal t-shirt from \u201cIrena\u2019s Vow,\u201d a play in which she starred as the Polish nurse Irena Gut who saved Jews in World War II. \u201cThere are no coincidences! I wore this on purpose,\u201d she says, pointing to the white lettering across her chest and reading aloud: \u201cWhat we do is who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t have Hashem on my shoulder\u201d she answers, when I ask her about faith. \u201cI am not an intellectual deist\u2026 I would equate my faith more to what I call G-d-spark, that is the g-dliness inside every mensch, that is inside every formed and informed human being.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s unafraid to marry the divine to the quotidian in what she calls the third act of her life. \u201cI believe in our rituals\u2014 because we have such a fabulous, practical religion. What other religion asks you gamble at Hanukkah, asks you to dress as the other sex for Purim, asks you to get drunk at Passover, and asks you to screw your brains out on Friday night? It\u2019s fabulous. And a tenet for divorce is if the husband doesn\u2019t honor the wife\u2019s bed! Every Jewish woman is entitled to an orgasm, and don\u2019t you forget it.\u201d<\/p>\n As Joan Roth and I laugh, and Feldshuh insists: \u201cI don\u2019t merely love Judaism, I treasure it. It is the practical guide to the full life movement. The one thing about observance\u2014it keeps you so busy that you don\u2019t have time not to be a Jew.\u201d Feldshuh, too, does not have time to not be Feldshuh. She\u2019s already late.<\/p>\n We\u2019re rushing along the bridle path, back to her apartment because she has to take a Lilyville<\/em> interview that\u2019s entirely in French. She turns to me, \u201cThe existential abyss comes closer and closer. Thus I fill my life with a lot of activities!\u201d We sit down together on the bench by Central Park West for a quick picture, and Roth has Feldshuh put her hand over mine. Her nails are perfectly painted, and she\u2019s so little that she\u2019s had to move her wedding band to her third finger. My nails are bitten, and I haven\u2019t worn a ring in years.<\/p>\n \u201cI do believe in our obligation to live to our highest level of decency,\u201d she says before she disappears into her building. And with that, the mensch is off the bench.<\/p>\n Liba Vaynberg<\/strong> is a writer and actor based in NYC<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From RBG to Golda Meir to Dr. Ruth to countless mothers and daughters, the actress has come to embody a certain kind of unflappable Jewish woman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":22608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[1473,1842,54,1757,3451,123,484,1476,3393,88,3450],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/22602"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Tovah](\"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Screen-Shot-2021-07-22-at-12.46.20-PM-300x209.png\")
![\"Tovah](\"https:\/\/phpstack-562680-2277615.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Screen-Shot-2021-07-22-at-12.47.44-PM-300x300.png\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n