Esther Kreitman
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Hinde Ester Singer Kreytman (1891-1954), known in English as Esther Kreitman, was a Yiddish-language novelist and short story writer. She was born in Bilgoraj, Poland to a rabbinic Jewish family. Her younger brothers Israel Joshua Singer and Isaac Bashevis Singer also became writers. Their youngest brother, Moyshe, became a rabbi and perished, together with his mother, in southern Kazakhstan, in the town of Dzhambul, (today Taraz). He had been forcibly evacuated to that town by the Soviets after having fled from German occupied Poland to the Ukrainian city of Lviv or Lvov, where he worked for two years as a religious teacher (information by Israel Zamir, Son of I. B. Singer).
Esther Kreitman had an unhappy childhood. According to her son, her mother gave her to an uncaring wet nurse for the first three years, who left her under a dusty table for three years - where she was visited once a week by her mother, who did not dare or did not want to touch her. Later, as a highly gifted child, she had to watch her younger brothers being taught, while she was relegated to menial household duties. Isaac Bashevis Singer was obviously inspired by her fate when he wrote "Yentl", where the main character very much resembles his older sister both in her appearance and her personality. Even if it is unclear where to draw the border between fact and fiction, Esther Kreitman does describe in her autobiographic novel "Deborah" how intensely she waited for the bookseller to come to the small village she grew up in, and how she lay in bed, dreaming to be a great scholar.
In 1912 she agreed to an arranged marriage, and went to live with her husband, a diamond cutter, to Antwerp, Belgium. Her son, Morris Kreitman, was born there. (He later was known by his journalistic pen name, Maurice Carr, and his novelistic pen name, Martin Lea.) The outbreak of World War I forced the family to flee to London, where Kreitman lived for the rest of her life, except for two long return visits to Poland.
Her marriage was not happy. She and her husband both worked in menial jobs, and she translated classic English works into Yiddish to earn extra money. Although she had been the first in the family to write, she published relatively late in life, her first novel Der Sheydims Tants (Dance of the Shadows or Spirits) appearing in Poland in 1936. It was translated by her son in 1946 as Deborah. Her second novel, Brilyantn (Diamonds) was published in 1944, and her book of short stories, Yikhes (Lineage, Pride) was published in 1949. Many of her works deal with the status of women, particularly intellectual women, among Ashkenazi Jews. Other works explore class relationships, and her short stories include several set in London during The Blitz, which she lived through. She died in 1954 in London. Since her death her works have been translated into French, German, Dutch and Spanish. Almost her entire small output is now available in English translation.
Her relationship with her brothers was complex. Both featured characters clearly inspired by her in their novels, Israel Joshua Singer in "Moshe Kalb", where she appears as unhappy seductress, and Isaac Bashevis Singer in "Satan in Goraj", where the central figure, an innocent girl who is crushed by circumstance, carries her features and particularities. (Esther Kreitman suffered from Epilepsia or a psychological problem with similar simptoms, and was later in life diagnosed as paranoid). I. B. Singer gives a moving account of her problems when she was pressured by her family to accept the arranged marriage (in "In my Father's Court") and her son tells of the central place her brothers had in the stories he constantly heard from her about her own childhood - until the two of them went to Poland in 1936, where she felt rejected by both Israel Joshua and Isaac Bashevis and never talked about them again. The grown up Isaac Bashevis Singer considered her the "best female Yiddish writer" he knew, but difficult to get along with. "Who can live with a volcano?" (Janet Hadda, I. B. Singer. A Life, New York 1997, p. 137). He dedicated the volume of his collected short stories "The Seance" (New York, 1968) "To the memory of my beloved sister".
[edit] References
- Esther Kreitman papers, YIVO.
- Maurice Carr, "My Uncle Itzhak: A Memoir of I. B. Singer", In: Commentary, December 1992
- Carr, Maurice. "My Mother, Hindele," Introduction by David Mazower, Pakn-Treger 45 (Summer 2004): 44-49.
- Clifford, Dafna. "From Diamond Cutters to Dog Races: Antwerp and London in the Work of Esther Kreitman", Prooftexts 23 (2003): 320-37.
- Hadda, Janet "Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life", New York 1997
- Norich, Anita. "The Family Singer and the Autobiographical Imagination", Prooftexts, 10 n. 1 (Jan. 1990): 97-107.
- Sinclair, Clive. "Esther, the silenced Singer", Los Angeles Times, Sunday, April 14, 1991: BR1, 11.
- Tree, Stephen. "Isaac Bashevis Singer", Munich 2004 (in German)
