Esther Kreitman

Who was Esther Kreitman?

Hinde Ester Singer Kreytman, known in English as Esther Kreitman, was a Yiddish-language novelist and short story writer. She was born in Biłgoraj, Congress Poland to a rabbinic Jewish family. Her younger brothers Israel Joshua Singer and Isaac Bashevis Singer also became writers.

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 where she was visited once a week by her mother, who did not 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. Kreitman's first novel includes numerous scenes depicting the main female character's desires for education: scenes in which she waits with great anticipation for the bookseller to arrive in their town, dreams of becoming a scholar, and hides a Russian text-book from the male members of her family so that they won't find out she is studying in secret. It is likely that these incidents reflect Kreitman's own story.

In 1912 she agreed to an arranged marriage, and went to live with her husband, a diamond cutter, to Antwerp, Belgium. The events surrounding this marriage are both described by her in Deborah and by Isaac Bashevis Singer in his autobiographical collection In my Father's Court.