Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Remembering Mary Tyler Moore, an Icon of Hope for This Jewish Woman

Mary Tyler Moore has died today at 80. Who was she and why am I crying?

First, as Mary Richards, pioneering single career woman protagonist on The Mary Tyler Moore Show:

Next, as Laura Petrie, on The Dick Van Dyke Show:

Laura Petrie, Moore’s character on the show, was also a style icon, dare I say my style icon, even if the result is… well, what it would be on someone 5’2” who’d never been a dancer.

Mary Richards, however, changed everything. It wasn’t just that there she was, a 30-something unmarried woman whose work life and female friendship were the plot. It was, well, every facet of the show. Her interactions with her male boss and nearly all male colleagues. Her chats with neighbor and (Jewish) best friend Rhoda, ostensibly about their quests for husbands, but only ostensibly. Mary Tyler Moore, iconic largely from that role, represents a moment of tremendous feminist hope.

The Jewish history of Mary Tyler Moore, person and TV personas, is extensive and very well-known, or maybe just in my family? There was the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode where Mary fights anti-Semitism. (A snooty old friend of Mary’s turns out to hate Rhoda for a sinister reason.) There was, well, Rhoda. Her earlier series, The Dick Van Dyke Show, has Jewish undercurrents it would take an entire generation of my female relatives to unpack. And Moore herself married a Jewish man, in a ceremony with a rabbi.

Mary Tyler Moore, you will be missed but not forgotten.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.