For Women in Translation month, I pulled Deborah (1936) by Esther Kreitman, translated from Yiddish by her son, Maurice Carr, in the 1940s. It was a gift from a Virago-loving friend called Alex back in 2020, and it definitely ticking off a language that I’ve never read before.
Deborah is apparently quite autobiographical, following a Rabbi and his family in early-20th-century Poland. Deborah has a brother who teases her, a mother who is apathetic towards her, and a father who is a little lost in lands of unworldliness and more interested in studying scripture than being demonstrative towards his daughter. For a long time, the novel looks at daily life in an insignificant town for a family who are sort of an outlier, socially.
Like so many young heroines in literature, Deborah is spirited, intelligent, and frustrated. She longs for education and for romance, and is offered neither. As a girl, her future is not considered to be worth discussing in comparison to her brother’s – except for marrying her off as suitably as possible. A local sort of matchmaker is forever suggesting possible suitors (each of whom has some sort of catch) and, to do her parents credit, they seem to take her refusals in their stride.
How happy she might have been if only she had been born a boy! It was not without good reason that her father had insisted, way back in Jelhitz, that girls were inferior creatures. Now why on earth could not men and women wear the same clothes? If she was to wear a gaberdine like Michael, then, like him, she could go wherever her fancy took her…
Finances are tight, and Reb Avram Ber (her father) is offered a more prosperous living in Warsaw. Indeed, he is offered the role of Tsadik – something Kreitman never fully explains, but something Reb Avram Ber does not think he can accept. Things go back and forth in some of the novel’s livelier scenes, and the family move to the capital. For Deborah, particularly, it is a totally new world.
“Well, that’s funny! It was only a short journey. And, do you know, I always used to think Warsaw was hundreds of miles away!”
“Yes, that’s just like you! You’re a great thinker, only you always think the wrong thing,” said Michael with a laugh, and Deborah blushed.
What a terribly busy station! And it was all paved with smooth flagstones – just like the description of a big railway station in one of the novels she had been reading. The crowd was seething with excitement – all in a tangle like a swarm of bees. And no one ever stopped, except for a brief instant to snatch a paper from one of the news-vendors. Why all this hurry? Had they all gone mad? Why couldn’t they walk along sensibly like normal people? They were a queer lot!
In this new environment, Deborah manages to get embroiled with a group of Socialists – partly because she is attracted to a young man involved with the movement (Simon) but moreso because she is beguiled by a young woman (Bailka) who is determined, witty and strident – and clearly the sort of person Deborah would like to be. But how can she get away, and start that sort of life?
Deborah learnt to detest her home. She realised only too well that the family had come to look upon her as an hysterical, irrational creature.She began to brood, and her every thought was – how to run away. Young people often left home on account of differences with their parents. When the rift between the old and the new generations became unbridgeable, a parting of the ways was inevitable. That was the course Bailka had taken. But she, Deborah, was not made of the same stuff as Bailka! Now, Baika was a prominent member of the party, but as for herself, she was being spurned by the movement. It was one thing to contemplate action, but another to accomplish it. Anyway, she had nowhere to go, no means of escape.
She spies some chance of escape by marrying the next young man who is suggested to her – but life is equally despondent and unfortunate with him. Her new parents-in-law are unaffectionate and unpredictable. Her husband is a sweet idiot, seemingly incapable of keeping them out of poverty. I found the dynamics of the marriage to be the most interesting part of the novel, and I wish that Kreitman had spent longer on this section. For a novel that is quite slow and steady for the most part, the final 75-100 pages felt a bit rushed – and perhaps a novel about their marriage alone would have felt a bit more focused and a little more satisfying?
Speaking of focused – it’s interesting that the original title was Der Sheydim-Tants (The Dance of the Demons) – and the change in title clearly puts the focus on Deborah. And that does make reading the novel quite strange at the beginning, because we spend rather more time with the Rabbi and his wife than with Deborah, and she doesn’t really emerge as a protagonist until the second half of the book. I did like reading the book, but the choice of title made me feel a bit disoriented, in comparison to the novel I was reading.
Overall, I think it would have been a better novel with a bit more editing and focus – but still an enjoyable read, and valuable to learn more about Jewish lives in Europe before and during the First World War.
Sounds really interesting, Simon, and I can’t say that I’ve read anything from Yiddish (though I *have* read Anzia Yezierska who apparently wrote in Yiddish-English dialect) That was a good find for WITMonth and also All Virago/All August!
Really interesting review Simon. I have this in the TBR so I appreciate hearing your thoughts on what is done well and the less successful elements too.
How interesting! Some years ago I had the opportunity to do a short course in Yiddish women’s literature and the text used was Found Treasures, Stories by Yiddish Women Writers. One of the stories that I read was by Esther Kreitman: it was about learning of her family’s disappointment when she was born and was not the boy they wanted.
It was an interesting course, but I have always preferred the novel, and I asked if there were any novels by Yiddish women that I might read. I had read two books by Yiddish men, published here in Australia where there is a large Yiddish-speaking community and also the Lamm Library which has a collection of Yiddish literature, some of it still untranslated. I wanted to read a novel by a woman, and for the reason you give: learning about the Jewish community *before* the Holocaust.
The answer appeared to be ‘no’ and yet here is Deborah, published in English in the 1940s and obviously published by Virago later on.
I’ve just looked at AbeBooks and it appears that there might be another novel called Diamonds.
This is the link if you want to see my thoughts about Kreitman’s short story. anzlitlovers.com/2021/04/29/the-new-world-by-esther-singer-kreitman-translated-by-barbara-harshav-in-found-treasures-stories-by-yiddish-women-writers-1947-edited-by-frieda-forman-et-al/
Really interesting review, thank you. Well done for finding a Yiddish writer for WIT month. I always try to pounce on those green jacketed viragos but I don’t think I have ever seen this one. Despite the minor flaws, I’m off now to search the library catalogue to see if they have a copy lurking in the stacks!. I did especially like the quote about her impressions of the city.
Sounds wonderful. Last year I read The Family Carnovsky by I.J. Singer, another famous Yiddish writer, and it completely swept me off my feet. It follows three generations of a Jewish family and sees their rise and fall in society before and during the two World Wars. It felt all too much like it was written in modern times. Gorgeously written yet very difficult to come by in English, I actually read it in Italian. Highly recommended!