Is the Jury In on the Jewish Mother?

In 2008, my mother and I appeared on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet to promote Have I Got a Guy for You: What Really Happens When Mom Fixes You Up. My essay in this anthology had given it a happy ending. Still, the show had invited a naysayer who vilified my mother for interfering. Under glaring lights and heavy makeup, Mom, for once, was at a loss for words. I pushed back, bristling, yet burning with shame: “My mom knows better than anyone what is best for me.” I added silently: It’s a Jewish mother thing. They don’t stand idly by.

This summer, the memory of that incident came flooding back when the valedictorian of my high school, Wendi Adelson, came under the media spotlight. Touted in our yearbook as “most likely to succeed,” Wendi Adelson had become a successful lawyer and married a prominent law professor. But these past few years she has been dominating YouTube, Reddit, CourtTV and national news as a witness for the defense in the criminal trials of her brother, his associates and, finally, of her mother, Donna, all of whom stood accused of taking part in the killing her ex-husband Dan Markel.

It was hard not to cringe at the Jewish stereotypes highlighted in court. Equally distasteful was the in-fighting between the Adelsons’ secular Judaism and Markel’s stricter observance.

I had always looked up to Wendi, and our paths had crossed tangentially after high school. My husband and hers had mutual friends; she and I gave birth within weeks of each other. So I had been following with interest as Wendi’s fourth turn on the stand ended with Donna’s conviction on September 4 for helping Wendi’s brother Charlie contract the hitmen who killed Wendi’s husband. After their divorce in 2013, Dan had blocked Wendi’s attempts to relocate with their children from Tallahassee to Miami, where Donna lived, and then had petitioned the court to mandate supervision while Donna watched the boys. As this motion was pending, in 2014, two men rented a Prius in Miami, drove to Tallahassee, tailed Markel home and shot him in his driveway. The hitmen received washed and stapled stacks of cash, allegedly supplied by Donna. 

Donna was always known as a Jewish mother par excellence. My mom would see her at the drugstore or Kinko’s, both running errands on their daughters’ behalf. The dermatologist who treated teenage acne knew both women well. At the trial, a friend of Donna’s testified that she was “the ultimate Jewish mother…very involved with her children’s and grandchildren’s lives.” It’s chilling for me to see the “Jewish mother” trope on trial and under scrutiny. What I have always experienced as loving warmth is now linked to a crime of hate. Donna screened profiles of potential husbands for her daughter on Jdate, planned Wendi’s wedding, gave orders framed as advice: everything that my own mom does as a point of pride. Of course, Donna brings the “meddling Jewish matriarch” archetype to disturbing extremes. When Wendi moved out while Dan was away, Donna helped execute what he described as “Pearl Harbor-style separation”: secretly renting an apartment under her own maiden name, then driving seven hours to direct the move. (Wendi left divorce papers, but no address, on the mattress.) Donna allegedly offered Dan $1 million to allow the children to move to Miami. She then turned to Charlie, described by Yahoo News as a “black sheep and mama’s boy,” to contract hitmen through a girlfriend. Shortly after the murder, Wendi changed her sons’ surnames from Markel to Adelson.

The Bible Belt jury may not have known any Jewish mothers personally. But for two weeks, they heard the divide between the honeyed drawl of prosecutor Georgia Cappleman and Donna’s heavy New York accent (in phone calls played as evidence—Donna declined to testify). Even Donna’s defense lawyer said: “She’s a meddler…not a murderer.”

It was hard not to cringe at the Jewish stereotypes highlighted in court and the media: the family portrayed as scheming unscrupulous elite, running a “dental empire” while having goyim do their dirty work and take the fall (the hitmen were arrested years before the Adelsons). 

Equally distasteful was the in-fighting between the Adelsons’ secular Judaism and Markel’s stricter observance. When the boys skyped with Dan, Wendi fed them bacon. Prosecution suggested that the Adelsons’ nickname for Markel, “Jibbers,” was short for “Jew in Boots,” scathing mockery that helped Wendi cut him down. And as Donna helped Wendi build her case for relocation, the Adelsons framed Dan’s “fanatical and extremist” beliefs (such as reportedly dragging them to temple, or withholding food on Yom Kippur) as “sick and dangerous” to the children. She even, according to prosecutor Cappleman, suggested her grandsons dress as Nazi Youth for Facebook photos in an attempt to rile Dan up. 

As a Jewish mother constantly dealing with her own, I struggle with the darker question: Can one parent not be trusted to raise their own kids alone? Is one opinion never enough? Would freezing out Grandma invite disaster, even when she isn’t homicidal? When Cappleman asked Wendi, “Did [your mother] think you incapable of driving to South Florida?” I anticipated her answer: “I was breastfeeding.” My mother’s voice rang in my head: You can’t travel with two babies while breastfeeding! For me, this is not condescending; it’s comforting. This is our love language.

Like Donna, many Jewish mothers cling to the belief that exerting control will shape the right outcome: higher-achieving, better-rounded children than we, their daughters, could raise ourselves, whether we’re single or married, working or not. After all, double the resources and double the attention yields exponential dividends. When exhausted parents pack two sandwiches in one lunchbox—as I did recently—grandparents can make it right with a hot meal after school. And yes, this dynamic can trod over tender feelings and healthy boundaries. But the goal is to give children every advantage in a harsh and unpredictable world. A world that doesn’t always go our way, especially when we’re Jewish. 

And yet the attempt to control lives can end up destroying them. As another Jewish mother—Dan’s mother Ruth—said in her victim impact statement as she described the devastation Donna’s decisions left in her wake. “It was a murder for convenience, so one grandmother could live closer to her grandchildren.” Their family, she added, “has endured years of forced estrangement, blocked communication, and exclusion from milestones in the boys’ lives. The harm has been generational.”

Melissa Pheterson is a writer and reporter based in Rochester, NY. 

Top image: Donna Adelson (screenshot)