No fury like a mother scorned

Adriaan Basson, News24 editor, is fortunate that my mother is no longer alive. So too is “Hogarth” who crowned me “Mampara of the Week” in the latest edition of the Sunday Times. Especially Hogarth, as they not only insulted her favourite son, but called into question her parenting skills by suggesting that perhaps I am such a “Mampara” because she didn’t play enough games with me when I was a child.

She would not have been impressed at all.

My mother was the parent who would walk up to the teacher’s table at parents’ evening and open with “Isn’t Howard too wonderful?” before explaining to the teacher how fortunate they were to have had an opportunity to educate me. In case the teacher took it for granted. She was the mother who when I was in Grade 4, went to the principal’s home, stormed into his bedroom and beat him over the head with a pillow because he hit me with a belt in front of the school (it was brutal back then). She was the mother who taught me to see the positive and to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if she and G-d were on my team then the result was guaranteed.

She was formidable on earth. It’s hard to imagine what she is capable of from up above now that she has G-d’s ear.

My week ended very differently to how it began. Desperate for a break from the madness of the last 11 months, my wife and I decided to take a week off and spend it in Mauritius. What we couldn’t have known was that Israel was about to launch an outrageous attack on Hezbollah operatives by detonating their communication devices.

I was genuinely blown away (if you would excuse the expression) and I tweeted so. I don’t believe that I glorified violence or that I celebrated death, but I did voice my awe. Within a few hours I had received an email from Basson saying that News24 could no longer be associated with me. Africa4Palestine was quick to issue a press statement supporting News24’s decision to get rid of me, especially considering that I am an “unrepentant and belligerent Zionist”.

My mother would not have been impressed. The Sunday Times missive was so short it was almost insulting. Surely, at a minimum, they could have given more coverage to my mother’s son. They could have promoted the piece and made sure not to have lost an estimated 340 000 of their 400 000 customers.

Basson is fortunate that he lives in the Western Cape. Were that not the case, and she was still alive, he would have found himself at a Shabbat dinner in no time at all. The poor man would have stood no chance as he would have been over-fed, watered, and lectured on the history of the family and of Jews simultaneously. He would have left humming the tune Shalom Aleichem and pondering if it was possible to erect an eruv around Stellenbosch.

Alive or not, my Jewish mother left me with a gift. A precious inheritance that she and others like her have bestowed on us all. They have taught us the real meaning of resilience and strength. They have taught us how to stand up as a Jew when there are those who work so hard to push us down. They have taught us when to celebrate, when to feed, and that when all else fails, to bash someone over the head with their bedding.

They have taught us that so long as Jewish mothers exist in this world, those who try and silence us stand no chance.