Books: Drone mom

Kate Siegel has turned her Instagram account ‘CrazyJewishMom’ into a risqué book.

By AMY SPIRO
Updated: MAY 5, 2016 13:36
Kate Siegel (photo credit: PR)
Kate Siegel
(photo credit: PR)
Forget helicopter mom. Kim Friedman readily admits she’s more of a “drone mom” when it comes to her one and only offspring, Kate Siegel.
Siegel has spun a series of wacky and often unbelievable tales from her unique upbringing into her debut book: Mother, Can You Not? What began as a wildly popular Instagram account with the handle @crazyjewishmom ended up in a book deal for the 20-something Princeton grad. In 2014, Siegel started posting screen captures of text messages from her mother on the social media app. The numerous and insistent messages berated Siegel for staying with her boyfriend who still hadn’t proposed, reminded her to perform Kegel exercises to strengthen her pelvic floor and warned her against living in – or ever going outside – her Brooklyn “deathtrap” apartment.
Siegel quickly gained a rapt audience, and today has more than 800,000 people following to see what crazy advice or madcap adventure her mother will mention next.
Now, Siegel has penned a book of her mother’s misadventures, heavily dotted with screenshots of some of her mother’s outrageous messages. The book is silly, lighthearted, crass and a very quick read. Siegel’s mother has no qualms discussing sex toys, vaginal grooming, bodily functions and even bringing her friends from the gay male stripper joint “BuffBoys” to family events.
Some of the stories are quite outlandish – and picked from the memory of a young girl, perhaps embellished – and many are cringe-inducing.
Despite the “Crazy Jewish Mom” tagline, the Jewish content is light throughout most of the book – with just a few casual references, including her mother bringing a diaphragm and spermicidal gel to the Seder table on Passover.
That is, until the third-to-last chapter, titled “Rabbi Hunting.” When Siegel was 24, her mother was dead set on finding her a nice Jewish boyfriend (that would lead to nice Jewish grandbabies, of course). So when she found out that, not only was there a Princeton rabbi, but he often held singles mixers for graduates, she had one goal in mind. Friedman befriended Chabad rabbi Eitan Webb – in person and on Facebook – and began pushing Siegel to go to every event. After several months without immaculate engagement, Friedman moved to the next step: inviting the rabbi and his wife to their home in New Jersey for a Hanukka party.
“Keep your friends close, but keep deeply religious Jewish people who might introduce your daughter to a nice Jewish boy closer,” Siegel wrote.
Of course, with the invite issued, they had to make sure things were kosher for the couple, in every way.
In the Friedman-Siegel household, she wrote, “the last time we went to synagogue was for a bar mitzva in 2002, and our bagel brunches involve serving a giant pile of bacon next to the lox and cream cheese.”
But with paper plates, ordered-in kosher food and repeated reminders to her mother not to hug the rabbi, the dinner went smoothly. And, Siegel notes, exactly four days later, “I met my current boyfriend, Jon, at a Hanukka party” hosted by Webb.
“So, and I really can’t emphasize this enough: If you force hassidic Jewish people to sleep in your home, they might find you a hunky kosher strip steak.”
If you can handle the frank talk of gynecology appointments, first sexual encounters and rape whistles (and more I can’t even print in this review), you can enjoy this playful romp through one of the more disturbing mother-daughter memoirs out there.