Reviewing: “Lilyville: Mother, Daughter and Other Roles I’ve Played” by Tovah Feldshuh. Hachette Books. 2021. English. Hardcover. 320 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0306924026.
Readers of Tova Feldshuh’s memoir “Lilyville: Mother, Daughter and Other Roles I’ve Played” will find it hard to believe that this work is the author’s first foray into the world of writing. But everything Tovah Feldshuh does, every theatrical role she plays, from Yentl, to Golda to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and soon to include Ruth Westheimer, she does to perfection. Part of this drive comes from her lifelong journey trying to please a mother who was always there to preserve and protect her children but not through warmth and tenderness, rather through sometimes painful honesty and criticism.
Released this spring 2021, the memoir explores the relationship of Tovah and her mother, Lily Kaplan Feldshuh, from the 1950s to seven years ago when Lily passed away at the impressive age of 103. At age 95 she underwent an experimental heart valve surgery that prolonged her life by eight years. The memoir is beautifully written, at times philosophical and serious, yet witty, clever and laugh-out-loud funny at intervals. In terms of its Jewishness, the humorous interjections, Yiddishisms and references to Jewish tradition are all charmingly combined into a warm and loving depiction of a mother-daughter relationship that can teach us all about the meaning of being there one for another and seeing who we are.
The memoir begins at a time in American Jewish history when, recently emerging from the horrors of the decimation of European Jewry, American Jews, some of whom had served in the armed forces during the war, were partaking of the new economic upswing and intent upon being “as American as apple pie.” This was a time when, living in Scarsdale surrounded by new wealth, you had to keep up with the standards of your neighbors and even exceed them if possible. This was the setting for Tovah Feldshuh’s early years. She attended Sarah Lawrence over Juilliard as “who would want their child attending a trade school.” But Tovah was determined to fulfill her dream of acting and so she attended drama classes in Manhattan while attending the “proper” school for high society’s young ladies.
After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, Feldshuh made her Broadway debut in the role of Yentl in 1973, but not before Terri Sue changed her name to Tovah. As the story goes, “For years, the boys in my class were named Terry. My godfather’s collie was Terry. When I lived in France for a summer, ‘Thierry’ was a boy’s name… I was now an international woman of adventure! International women of adventure are not called Terri Sue. Tovah began as a love name between my non-Jewish boyfriend Michael and me. The name Tovah originates from Hebrew, the ancient holy language of the Torah and means ‘good.’ To pronounce Tovah, the mouth soars into an open cathedral for the OH then spreads generously wide for the AH. TO-VAH: mysterious yet melodious—and it was authentic to my history. Tovah was the name of my mother’s beloved Aunt Tillie… Tovah has an H at the end which stands for the covenant with G-d. It’s a name that has gravitas.”
Mother Lily’s reaction to the name change: “We didn’t come to this country for you to call yourself Tovah! You already have an unpronounceable last name and now you’re going to take Tovah as your first name? Do I have to tell you what confusion you are creating? And do I really have to call you that?” What Lily was expressing was the underlying lifetime goal of her generation, blending in. “You had an obligation to blend in for patriotic and practical reasons.” But for Tovah, “I was the second generation and I didn’t need to blend in. I now felt safe enough to stand out, to embrace my old-world heritage with pride. Tovah prevailed and ushered me into my womanhood.”
At her marriage to Andrew Levy, the love of her life, in March of 1977, “My mother squeezed my hand and leaned in close to whisper, ‘You can do anything you want now Tovah!’ Forget the fact that I had just won five major awards on Broadway in the same season. Never mind that I had spent months starring in the surprise hit Yentl that garnered my very first marquee billing. My name was literally up in lights but in my mother’s eyes success wasn’t marquee value. Success was marrying the Harvard lawyer. She could relax now. After all, she came from a generation where a woman was defined by the man she married.”
As outer appearances were always of utmost importance to Lily, one of the numerous quips that Feldshuh quotes from her mother is, “Tovah, I rate your parts by how you look. Dolly Levi (in Hello Dolly) a TEN; Golda Meir? A ZERO!”
After losing her beloved husband, Sidney, Lily was determined to resume her life aggressively. “Happiness is a choice. Sometimes we have to will it so.” Lily, totally deaf, began attending classes at her shul. “In other words, at 95, she was studying Torah and Talmud without even being able to hear. Now our calls went from talking about Lord and Taylor to talking about the Lord and Talmud.”
After her mother’s death on June 10, 2014, Tovah consoled herself. “To die at 1:36 a.m. could be interpreted as a religious omen. As you know, eighteen—chai—is a magical and mystical number in the Jewish religion. Mother died at the moment of double chai, double life. We can interpret this several ways: as the two lives my mother was given from ages 1 to 95 to over 103 —her medical miracle. We could also interpret it as the two lives I had with my mother that were polar opposites: the cold, vacant one for the first twenty-seven years of my life, and the warm, inextricably intertwined one in the last 18 years of her life, a lifetime in itself. To die on the dot of double chai could also be a message about life after life, one that exists in an imperceivable dimension where hopefully she may be experiencing eternity.”
Tovah Feldshuh is a six-time Emmy and Tony nominee and has been awarded three honorary Doctorates of Human Letters. For her theater work, she has won four Drama Desks, four Outer Circle Critics Circle, three Dramalogues, the Obie, the Theater World and the Helen Hayes and Lucille Lortel Awards for Best Actress. She performed on Broadway in Yentl, Golda’s Balcony, Irena’s Vow, Pippin and most recently Sisters in Law as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsurg. She has also performed in numerous movies and TV shows. Feldshuh is the recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanities Award, Hadassah’s Myrtle Wreath and Mother of the Year Award and the Israel Peace Medal.
By Pearl Markovitz
