[5][6] The book was adapted into a play starring Molly Picon and Godfrey Cambridge which had a brief run on Broadway at the Hudson Theater from December 1967 through January 1968.

[1][7] The actress Gertrude Berg was preparing for the main role in the play but died during pre-production.

A 1983 French adaptation, Comment devenir une mère juive en 10 leçons, met with long-running success.

It is deemed as a book that reinforced the stereotype of the Jewish mother in American culture.

[11] The anthropologist Jonathan Boyarin qualified the book a "work of covert anti-Semitism".