How to redeem an unfulfilled life? Can children pick up where their parents left off? What of the very act of telling, recovering and reconstructing shattered dreams by sharing the story? Thirty years after the death of his mother, author Samuel Freedman has created a thoughtful portrait of the complicated woman he hardly knew, Eleanor Hatkin Freedman.
The tale tells of the enormous frustrations that often accompanied the immigrant experience in America. With a run-down New York tenement — pushcarts and storefront synagogues in the lively streets — this setting is the classic staging for American Jewish upward mobility.
But Eleanor was impatient for her own fulfillment. A brilliant student, she was valedictorian of her high school class and received a scholarship to Brooklyn College. Her parents were Sol, an unambitious shoemaker, and Rose, a fiercely proud mother who scrounged through green grocer garbage bins rather than accept charity or government relief.
Economic pressures quickly took their toll and Eleanor had to leave college to support her family. The difficulties for women in fulfilling career ambitions were commonplace and became the classic dream deferred, which would, hopefully, be redeemed by children. Samuel, a professor at Columbia, is author of the acclaimed “Jew vs. Jew” which won the National Jewish Book Award.
Freedman’s purpose is to make meaning out of his mother’s brief life (she died at age 50) and to use her tale as a backdrop for illuminating the place, time, and culture of Jewish New York in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The immigrant saga is of course chronicled by Irving Howe, Howard Sachar, Max Dimont and other scholars, but Freedman’s “Who She Was” is idiosyncratic because it is the story of a woman whose life essentially peaked when she was in high school.
Eleanor Hatkin was also a natural rebel. She opposed (indeed, hated) her mother, who spoke only in Yiddish and distrusted anything American. The daughter defied her mother in every way, such as eating Chinese food on Yom Kippur and generally dismissing her Jewish faith. Rose Hatkin once threatened to kill herself if Eleanor went ahead with plans to marry an Italian Catholic suitor. In one of the few instances of backing down, Eleanor decided not to put her mother to the test. There were many reasons why Eleanor Hatkin died unfulfilled, beginning with the tabling of her own
career dreams when her father proved unable to support their small family and Eleanor had to go back to work. She had hoped to be a bacteriologist like her heroine Madame Curie. But Eleanor found herself with limited opportunities in a society that placed low value on women’s career aspirations, save teaching and nursing.
Eleanor was also unfulfilled because of the enervating relationship with her own mother, who considered religious fidelity more important than love or happiness. This helped propel Eleanor into a disastrous first marriage to Lenny Schulman and lifelong enmity toward her mother. As Samuel recounts, “That need to hate her mother deformed my mother’s life.”
Samuel Freedman’s quest for his mother’s soul became a serious research project. He systematically interviewed friends and family and scoured the Internet for sources. Among other facts, Samuel discovered how Eleanor had made unsuccessful efforts to save family trapped in Poland by the Holocaust.
The picture that emerges, once the darker moments are set aside (especially of Eleanor’s five-year battle with breast cancer), is of a woman who was extremely intelligent, though she prized her vanity above her intellect. She was also vivacious and free-spirited. Samuel recounts his mother’s interests, jobs, and hobbies, which she went through “the way she went through cigarettes, lighting the next off the stub of the last.”
Eleanor sought meaning in her second marriage by pursuing guitar, painting, sculpting, and creative writing (husband Dave Freedman owned a scientific instruments company.) She volunteered for the PTA and the League of Women Voters and tutored Title 1 students
If there is a flaw in the book it might be the virtual abandonment of the story in 1953, after the divorce from Lenny and marriage to Dave. Samuel picks up his mother’s life in 1974, when she is dying, and provides only a sketch of the Freedman’s clearly prosperous life in New Jersey over the two-decade interim.
Eleanor Hatkin’s tombstone reads “A Special Person, 1924-1974.” In her loving son’s testimony his mother’s specialness — to him and to others who knew her — will by his writing survive, and in some way this tender impulse may help redeem her life.
“Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life,” by Samuel G. Freedman (Simon & Schuster, 337 pages, $24.00.)
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