Sheydim-ṭants

by Ester Ḳreyṭman

"First published in Yiddish in 1936, Deborah is perhaps the only novel to give us full insight into the experience of growing up female in a traditional Polish Jewish family soon after the turn of the century, as the world of the shtetl gave way to modernity. Esther Singer Kreitman provides a loving but clear-eyed depiction of this world in flux, replete with rabbis and yeshiva students, socialist rebels and gangsters, street vendors and seamstresses. At the same time, the novel reveals the frustration of its young protagonist: so hungry for life and learning, Deborah is barred from formal education, confined to the household, and finally exiled into an arranged marriage. As her life closes in around her, Deborah's apocalyptic visions seem to presage the cultural, as well as personal, destructions to come." "In Deborah, Kreitman recalls much of her own youth as the elder sister who watched her younger brothers, Isaac Bashevis and I. J. Singer, enjoy the education denied her. As Bashevi