Stop Kvetching and Show Some Chutzpah
by Steve Woodward, The Oregonian
She meddles. She nags. She orders you to get a grip.
"She is an incredible problem solver," says an admiring Eileen Traylor of Eugene.
She's Helen Rosenau, known to her growing legion of followers as Your Jewish Fairy Godmother.
"I'm not afraid to tackle anything," Rosenau declares, "except peace in the Middle East."
What she has tackled ranges from how to get a pesky relative off the phone -- set the oven timer to go off during the conversation -- to how to tell your supervisor that she stinks. "I delicately told her that someone had approached me and said her deodorant wasn't doing the job," says Rosenau, who tackled that task herself.
Rosenau, who is 53 and Jewish, defies description. She is neither counselor nor financial adviser nor social worker nor consumer advocate. Yet people from Portland to New York -- Jewish or not -- have begun to rely on her as their own fairy godmother, eager to help them sweep away the nagging problems of their lives.
The Eugene woman operates a Web site (www.YourJewishFairyGodmother.com) and writes an advice column called "Ask Your Jewish Fairy Godmother." Unlike other advice columnists, Rosenau gets directly involved in her clients' lives, brainstorming, researching and coaching -- usually for a fee that averages $50 to $100.
Her Web site declares that she has "black belts in schmoozing, manipulation and chutzpah." She even offers her own recipe for chicken soup.
Rosenau estimates that she has helped several hundred people so far.
"Helen is the type of friend not everybody wants, but everybody needs," says Josh Epstein, a Portlander who discovered Rosenau through a Yahoo user group. "She's the only person I've met who will tell you everything you need to hear."
She took on the University of Oregon registrar for a client who was told he couldn't graduate because he was one credit short. "We found some loophole that we squeezed through," she says.
She helped craft a strategy for a gay man to tell his family about his homosexuality.
She gives excuses to people who need them to get out of commitments -- "believable realities," such as a child's soccer game.
Teaching life skills
Rosenau says she likes to think she's teaching people life skills: How to write a letter of recommendation. How to fight a video store over late fees. How to deal with a crabby co-worker.
"The toughest situations are ones where I can't affect the outcome," Rosenau says. "If it's calling the phone company and complaining, in a heartbeat I can help those."
Rosenau grew up in Philadelphia, the eldest daughter of German immigrants. She says her father taught her to work hard and care about doing things well. She says her mother taught her to love reading, cooking, history, art and chocolate.
Rosenau has academic degrees in international relations, history and biostatistics. She taught introductory statistics for 16 years and now works at a Eugene economics consulting firm, where she functions as administrator and research analyst.
"People who know me think of me as completely rational," she says. "I think of myself as completely intuitive."
"She's on your side"
That intuition took form one day in 2000, while she was sitting in her yard, staring at an old oak tree. Suddenly, she recalls, a voice in her head said, "www.YourJewishFairyGodmother.com." Soon Rosenau had a Web site that declares, "She's clever, she's wise, she's relentless, and she's on your side."
Eileen Traylor tapped Rosenau when she found herself unhappy with a business relationship. Traylor says Rosenau has "this incredible ability to . . . get right to the issue," Traylor says. "While I'm trying to take everyone's feelings into account, she helped me see that I needed to get out of that business."
Instead of walking away without a dime, Traylor negotiated a settlement with Rosenau's help. "If I hadn't used Helen, I wouldn't have walked away with any money," Traylor says. "It was a huge eye-opener for me."
Ruthe Thompson, a Minnesota professor who recently learned about Rosenau through her Web site, is consulting Rosenau for two problems: the aftermath of breast cancer surgery and a potential divorce. Rosenau responded to her initial e-mail with an "absolutely warm, lucid, rational" summary of the situation. "She's got this intelligence," Thompson says. "You know, she's a mensch. It seems to me what she's doing is making the world a better place."
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Josh Epstein and his fiancee, Wendy Jones, found themselves considering a move to the Northwest from New York City. Rosenau steered them to Portland, helped Epstein find a job, helped Jones launch a holistic healing practice and advised them on the minor details of life in Oregon, such as DEQ inspections for their car.
Last year, Rosenau began writing an advice column, which now runs in six Jewish Journals in south Florida, two newspapers in California and one in New Jersey.
Advice sometimes off the mark
Rosenau's advice is occasionally off the mark. Sharon Geltner, a reader in West Palm Beach, Fla., took her to task earlier this year for what she considered bum advice -- suggesting a bedtime checklist and doctor visits for a nearly blind, deaf and confused senior who had trouble taking care of himself. Geltner suggested that better advice would have been to tell the man's daughter-in-law to contact a local social service agency. Rosenau ran Geltner's letter and took the criticism in stride. "Her column is far-reaching," says Geltner, who says she reads the column "religiously."
More typical is 25-year-old Matt Sayre's experience. Sayre moved from Eugene to San Francisco in 2000 to join the dot-com revolution, working as a technology consultant for the Industry Standard, the bible of the dot-com industry. A year later, the magazine went bankrupt, and Sayre was out of a job. "When I lost my job at the Industry Standard, she helped me make the smart choice over the easy choice," he says. "I was contemplating coming back to Oregon. It would have been easy to come back. Instead, I stuck it out." Rosenau recommended that he enjoy the summer in San Francisco with his girlfriend and find another job there. When he finally decided the time was right to return to Oregon, Rosenau gave him job-hunting advice, cautioning him not to jump at the first opportunity that came along.
Rosenau says the day-to-day aggravations of life are the most fun to resolve.
"I don't want to be the Jerry Springer of the advice world," she says. "I want to help people be a little more charming and have more chutzpah."
Helen Susan Rosenau
Residence: Eugene, Oregon
Birthday: Will be 54 on May 17 - "Taurus with leo rising"
Fees: First email consultation is free: $1 a minute to fix a specific problem on your behalf; negotiated fee for ongoing coaching relationship.
Work experience: For 16 years, she taught statistics and counseled working adults in college-degree completion programs at Chapman College in California and Linfield College in Oregon.
Current day job: Administrator, ECONorthwest
Her weakness: Chocolate
Sample column topics: Atrocious gift, son's gay roomate, returning used shoes, exhibitionist neighbor.
Quote: "If you need to survive an emotional crisis, the answer is Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk. It is possible to live on that and chai for long periods of time."
Jewish Fairy Godmother's 10 commandments
1. Ask for what you want.
2. Think strategically.
3. Treat other people well.
4. Keep asking questions.
5. Work every angle.
6. Use charm and chutzpah.
7. Say what needs to be said.
8. Enjoy the ride as much as the win.
9. Make your own good luck.
10. Believe in yourself.
Steve Woodward: 503-294-5134; stevewoodward@news.oregonian.com
To read the Register Guard article, click here.
To return to website, click here.