The indomitable stage performer Sophie Tucker began singing her classic ballad "My Yiddishe Mama" in 1925, after the death of her own mother. As Antler writes, it's an ode to "ethnic nostalgia" and "the sentimentalized ghetto" at a time when the children of Jewish immigrants were trying to assimilate into the New World. Fittingly, the lyrics are sadder in Yiddish than in the English version that non-Jews would have heard. In translation, here are the last Yiddish lines, full of pining, plus a pinch of guilt:

She would have leaped into fire and water for her children.
Not cherishing her is certainly the greatest sin.
Oh, how lucky and rich is the person who has such a beautiful gift from God:
Just a little old yiddishe mama, my mama.

Thus, Jewish mother-love arrived in America through popular song.