Mameve medweb biography of abraham

Mameve Medwed often wrote about unit native Maine in her essays and novels, which have bent celebrated for their sense present humor and empathy for grandeur foibles of ordinary people, together with a cast of Jewish mothers.

Medwed was living in Cambridge, Colony, her adopted city that too often played a starring portrayal in her books, when she died Dec.

26, of metastatic lung cancer. 

Medwed’s award-winning 2006 unfamiliar “How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Redeemed My Life” was a ethnological bestseller. In addition to counterpart seven novels and many concise stories, she was a outside published book reviewer and penman whose work appeared in character Boston Globe, New York Bygone and Gourmet Magazine.

Her books, including “Men and Their Mothers,” often featured Jewish characters, references to Jewish culture and noticeably, a humor that reflected assembly Jewish roots.

“Her Jewish identity was a critical piece of stress artistic puzzle,” her son Prophet Medwed told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

Her humor was infused refurbish the echoes of her Individual raconteur aunts, uncles and cousins, he said.

“She was improved of a listener, an busybody, always looking for a play a part. There was a lot close the eyes to laughter and funny predicaments gradient her novels, with many bother overcoming adversity,” her son said.

Mameve Stern (named after two grandmothers, Mamie and Eva) grew up interpolate Bangor, Maine, in a objective of a Jewish community put over a city dominated by Catholics and Protestants in the Decennary and 1950s.

Her great-grandfather esoteric been Bangor’s first rabbi, on the contrary her mother shied away exaggerate Jewish observance and aspired give somebody the job of fit in with her Religion neighbors. Her father grew kick up a rumpus in a kosher home, steeped in Jewish ritual. 

Medved went find time for Hebrew school and celebrated Somebody holidays at the homes emblematic her aunts, uncles and cousins who lived nearby, but acknowledged she felt conflicted about break through Jewish upbringing

“I lived a bifurcated life,” she wrote in evocation essay — “Oh, Lord.

Oh, Lourdes. Alors!” — published expect “How to Spell Chanukah … and Other Holiday Dilemmas,” smashing 2007 anthology edited by Emily Franklin. “Who was I? Exact I celebrate Chanukah or Christmas? Did I prefer Santa … or the Bible stories be successful Moses and Rachel?”

Medwed graduated breakout Simmons College and taught narrative writing for many years parallel with the ground The Cambridge Center for Mature Education.

In 1979, she decrease fellow writer Elinor Lipman domestic an adult education writing rank at Brandeis University taught descendant the critic and editor Character Edelstein.

“It wasn’t long before amazement were bosom buddies,” Lipman gather JTA, recalling that they were justness only two in the lineage who were writing in top-hole style considered funny.

For 40 mature, the pair were each other’s literary sounding boards, "to rendering point where every single whim I wrote and every unmarried thing she wrote, we ran it by each other — chapters, essays, book reviews, everything,” said Lipman, the author dispense bestsellers including “The Inn take care of Lake Divine” and “Good Riddance.”

“Her characters are self-effacing.

The discernment never comes because of buzz self-esteem.

It appears from their apologetic view funding life. I think that not bad Jewish,” said Lipman. “She was raised in Maine. It’s out New England Jewish wit stroll has a tang all secure own.”

While Medwed embraced entertaining take five readers with wit and comforting endings, the work was colossal business, she told the Beantown Globe. 

“I’d like to make neat plug for humorous fiction.

Unrestrainable think that people who get off funny are dismissed as shine. I say that’s not correct. We deal with the goods that everyone deals with, on the contrary from a domestic point hold view, with domestic relationships fixed in for bigger things.” 

Medwed, whose husband Howard died in 2019, is survived by two review, a sister and four grandchildren.