ESTHER SINGER KREITMAN. The trammeled talent of

Manor — takes Esther's story even further, Isaac Bashevis Singer's transmuting it into Singer's own obsession with transsexuality. In Satan in Goray, a woman's body is possessed by a dybbuk, neglected sister. so that she is simultaneously both man and woman. "When my sister asked Mother what she should be when she grew up',' I.J. Singer n 1938, Faber & Faber, the prestigious for a scholarly woman. Pinchos Mendel wrote in his memoirs, "Mother answered British publishers, brought out an an• was determined not to repeat his father-in- her question with another: 'What can a girl I thology entitled Jewish Short Stories. law's mistake of educating a daughter. As be?'" For girls from religious homes dur• Its editor later called the anthology the child grew, Bathsheva became jealous ing these years, there was only one answer: "something of a disguised family affair!' of Hinde's ambition, which filled to bring "happiness into the home by Four of the writers were intimately related, Bathsheva with despair about her own ministering to her husband and bearing though you would never know it from their unarticulated life. From the start, both him children!' Bathsheva, wanting to spare altered names: I.J. Singer, Isaac Bashevis, husband and wife were determined to keep her daughter her own frustrations and Esther Kreitman and Martin Lea. their daughter ignorant. unattainable dreams, believed that it was What we have here are three siblings and Indeed, Hinde Esther wasn't only ne• "better to be content as a dairy cow than to a nephew/son. Martin Lea is the nom de glected; it seems she was ill-treated. At be a lost spirit!' plume of the editor, Morris Kreitman; he is birth she was handed over to a wet nurse In [Hinde] Esther Kreitman's semi- also the son of author Esther Kreitman who who lived "in a wretched hut!' She was autobiographical novel, Deborah, a is, in turn, the sister of authors I.J. and "placed in a cot under a tabled' says her female character asks her father, "What am Isaac Bashevis (who dropped the family son, Morris Kreitman (now known as I going to be one day?" He replies, "What name, Singer, for his English-language Maurice Carr). "She was never touched, are you going to be one day? Nothing, of debut). let alone fondled by her mother. Not until course!' the age of three, when [she had become] Even when she was alive, Esther Kreit• blinded by cobwebs from under the table, hat little we know from Hinde man's novels, short stories and translations was the child at last taken home, where she W Esther's point of view must be received far less attention than the work of but partially recovered her sight, doomed culled from her fiction. In Debo• her famous brothers. In death, she's been to remain physically and psychically sick rah, Kreitman describes the protagonist's wholly forgotten. Yet she clearly has the the rest of her life!' spirit of revenge and determination: same deep, haunting literary storyteller's Almost every night, in bed, she firmly gifts as her siblings. Why do so few of us inde Esther remained scorned by resolved to give up her duties of keep• even know her name? Why is her work her parents through the remainder H ing house and to become a student either lost or out-of-print? Why are people of her life, her role in the family, instead. Ever since childhood she had surprised to find out that the Singer broth• says Carr, that of "household drudge!' longed to receive an education, to cease ers had a literary sister whose fiction Still, despite their most zealous efforts, being the nonentity of the family. She appeared in English as well as Yiddish? she turned out to be, as Isaac Bashevis would learn things, gain understanding Singer later remarked, a "chassid in skirts" Hinde Esther Singer was born on March ... she, Deborah — the girl who, as her — perceived by the family as irrelevantly 31, 1881, the daughter of Bathsheva and father had once said, was to be a mere bookish and clever, too smart for a girl's Pinchos Mendel Singer. Bathsheva was an nobody when she grew up — would be a own good. intellectual, but both Bathsheva's father person of real consequence. She would and her husband disapproved of erudite Her tragically strangled intellectual life make her own life. women. Bathsheva's greatest failing, said made a lifelong impression on her brother, her father, was that she had been born a younger by thirteen years, Isaac Bashevis. In true life, Kreitman's resolve to "be a woman. Both LB. and I. J. Singer charac• His famous story, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy person of real consequence" and to "make terize Pinchos and Bathsheva's marriage as (which became Barbra Streisand's movie her own life" was more crippled and a grave mismatch. Yentl) — about a girl who disguises herself crippling than Deborah's steely bedtime That they should then have a daughter as a boy so that she might receive an resolutions. Kreitman's life turned out to who, like Bathsheva, turned out to crave education — was inspired by Hinde Es• be full of conflict, sacrifice and anguish. an intellectual life was a tragedy to both ther's life. Indeed, much of I.B.'s fiction — Unable to shuck convention completely, parents. There was no place in the shtetl for example, Satan in Goray and The and not "the kind of girl who could be

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married off easily [because she had] ac• Next, she was included in Jewish Short quired some modern ideas, and read Yid• Stories. Her novel, Brillianten, about life dish newspapers and books, and longed among the Jewish diamond merchants of for a romance, not an arranged marriage" Antwerp, appeared in 1944 and again (as Isaac Bashevis wrote), she eventually Kreitman garnered favorable notices. The consented to an arranged match with a distinguished critic Melech Ravitch men• hapless diamond cutter from Antwerp tioned its "rich descriptions" and "massive named Avraham Kreitman. But she began, background of the outlandish Jewish way and remained, unhappy about the union. of life!' The review sounds terribly familiar '"You're sending me away because you — it could, indeed, be written in relation to hate me!'" I. B. once wrote, describing any of the literary Singers' work. Kreit- Esther's anger at her mother. Still, when man's voice is distinctly Singeresque. Bathsheva — perhaps remembering her Interestingly, Kreitman, says her son, own unhappy marriage — offered to call "never sought to make capital of her off the wedding, Esther cried, '"No. I'd belonging to the Singer family; she kept rather go into exile. I'll disappear. You herself to herself with the name Kreitman, won't know what happened to my re• which she had come by through her mains'" She entered her marriage, wrote enforced and loveless marriage!' Not only I.B. Singer, like "a corpse ... [but] in full did she lack a room of her own, but a name possession of her senses!' One moment she Still, as time passed, Esther seemed of her own. looked upon her marriage as an escape, the unable to conquer her desire to write. next as an exile. Several times she left London (where the y the time her third book came out, a In the autobiographical memoir, In My Kreitmans had settled) and her marriage, collection of short stories entitled Father's Court, Isaac Bashevis Singer returning to Warsaw with the intention of B Yichus, Kreitman was used to the mentions a particularly lavish gift that embarking on a literary career. But, con• encouraging reviews and literary gather• Hinde Esther received from her future flicted, she always ended up in London ings. Still, success failed to make her father-in-law. A golden chain. Deborah, again. In 1929 she set out once more, happy. She kept the reviews pasted in a too, in the eponymous novel, is given such leaving son and husband, with the stated book, but they seemed to make for only a necklace. She shivers at "the touch of the purpose, says Carr, of living in Warsaw for superficial pleasure. cold metal and the thought that the most good and "of mending her hitherto wasted Nothing, it seems, could erase Esther's vicious of dogs might safely be tied up life!' early, deep ostracisms — starting with with a chain such as this?' Somehow, For ten months, she lived the life of a three years of life under a "foster-family's" however, I.B. fails to really empathize writer, translating Dickens' Christmas table — which scarred her with her own with his sister, or to recognize that he and Carol and Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's shaidim tantz (devils' dance) for the rest of his brother had the privilege of being the Guide to Socialism and Capitalism into her life: troublingly confused loyalties, liberated, culturally emancipated male ver• Yiddish to earn money. But something fury, grief, contradictory desires, jealousy sions of the stifled Bathsheva and Hinde about this experience was very negative, towards her brothers, and, ultimately, the Esther. The Singer brothers were able to and, despite her plans, she retreated to essential loneliness and cost of female break the great chain of tradition that England once again. "Whatever her expe• creativity, intellect, and ambition. choked the life out of their sister. riences out there, she, the inveterate story• Kreitman died in 1954, and, contrary to teller, for once did not confide in me;' says Jewish law, asked that she be cremated. t the young age of twenty, Hinde Carr. She said that she dreaded what the shaidim Esther had already written, accord• Soon, Kreitman's dichotomy — being a that persecuted her in life might do to her A ing to I.J., an impressive collection writer in Warsaw versus being a wife and body in the grave. She wanted to confound of short stories. But, Maurice Carr re• mother in London — seemed to ease up. them after all, and have some victory, ports, "the thought of seeing them in print Staying in England, she began to publish some peace. never entered her mind!' Esther had shown short stories in the Yiddish dailies and Hinde Esther Kreitman is a forgotten the stories only to I.J., and then to their literary journals of Warsaw, Paris, Ant• literary foremother, her works largely lost, mother — who read them without werp, London, New York, Buenos Aires ignored and out-of-print. Isaac Bashevis comment. and Toronto. Singer dedicated The Seance to her mem• "At Bathsheva's behest" says Carr, "on In 1936, her first novel — Der Shaidim ory, but the proofreaders (shaidim's ap• the train journey to the unhappy wedding Tantz (literally The Devils' Dance, trans• prentices) were careless, and her name in Berlin — lest the Czarist frontier offi• lated with the whitewashed title of Debo• appeared as Minde Esther. cials suspect the Yiddish writings to be rah) — was published in Poland. The May she rest in peace. Socialist, seditious — Hinde Esther tore up English translation received enthusiastic — adapted from an article by Clive Sinclair the exercise books and threw the shreds out reviews, though no one, of course, thought of the window!' Esther was trying, by to comment on the meaning of Kreitman's Clive Sinclair is a novelist and former literary sheer 'will and singular dramatized ges• being the first female novelist to sing the editor of The London Jewish Chronicle. His ture, to accept her destiny as wife rather praises of the Haskalah (the Jewish most recent novel is Cosmetic Effects (New than writer. Enlightenment). York: Viking/Penguin, 1990).

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