Arts & Entertainment

15: Ittinutes

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Steve Roberts

Samuel Freedman

Acclaimed journalist reflects
on immigrant dad.

SUZI BROZMAN
Atlanta Jewish Times

S

teve Roberts is the author of My

Fathers' Houses: Memoir of a
Family (William Morrow;
$23.95). After graduating from
Harvard in 1964, he went to work for
the New York Times, where he worked
for 25 years. He now teaches political
science and journalism at George
Washington University in Washing-
ton, D.,C., and is a frequent commen-
tator on radio and television. Roberts
is the co-author with his wife, Cokie
Roberts, of From This Day Forward

Q: Why did you write this particular

book?

A: To write down wonderful tales of my

own family. My wife commented,
"Steven, you've honored your ancestors."
That summed it up perfectly, a gesture
of love and affection.

iy in three significant ways.
There are no Jews left in most of these
places. There is no one to tend the
records, the gravestones, the tangible
symbols of our lives there as a people.
And many of our forebears would not
look .back. If you asked them what life
was like — many had fled from persecu-
tion both political and religious — they
wouldn't discuss that. It is common and
understandable, but the result was to
deprive our people of access to their own
history

* How do you reconcile your intense
Jewishness in your marriage to a
Catholic?
Cokie and I have committed our-
selves deeply to respecting each other's
tradition. My mother calls her the best
Jew in the family. She is of a strong faith
tradition and has committed herself to
making Judaism part of our household.
It's in my house that the
strongest elements of Judaism
are present anywhere in our
family.

Q: How did you research
your family's history?
A: I had the stories from my
MY FATHERS' * How did writing this
family, who fortunately did
HOUSES
talk and write letters to leave
book change you?
A. When I stood on the train
a record. Knowing they were
from Bialystok, I traced some-
platform at Bialystok, the
one in New York who could
place my ancestor had left
,61iR
get me in contact with an
from 100 years ago, I was lit-
expert. My wife and I were
erally standing in his foot-
going to be traveling in that
steps. I was there for every
part of the world, so we crafted the trip.
person killed in pogroms or by the
Nazis, people who would never have the
Q: Who will relate to your stories?
chance to have children to follow in
A: This is very much about my roots in
their own footsteps. I was there for all of
them.
the Jewish community and the Jewish
traditions of learning, writing, involve-
This book also gave me a wonderful
ment in public affairs, but I hope people insight into the power of my parents'
from elsewhere will see similarities to
devotion and a real sense of the harsh-
their own histories.
ness of the Depression, how people lived
and survived the bleak and desperate
Q: How have readers responded to your years.
family's history?
In a larger sense, I had a renewed
A: I've had a tremendous outpouring
appreciation for the tradition I had
from people who know I've made this
inherited. The book's title describes the
journey, people wanting to know how to places I grew up, houses built by my
find out about their family for their own
father and grandfather. But this is a
children.
metaphor, too. I live by the code and
This is not easy for American Jews.
values and spirit and traditions they
handed down to me. ❑
We have been walled off from our histo-

6/16
2005

46

ass

Searching for his mother's life,
author offers unflinching portrait.

SUZI BROZMAN
Atlanta Jewish Times

S

amuel Freedman is the
author of four books, includ-
ing the newly published Who

She Was: My Search for My
Mother's Lift (Simon & Schuster;
$25). The acclaimed author of Jew
vs. Jew regularly writes for the New
York Times and other publications
and teaches journalism at
Columbia University in New York.

Q: Why did you choose to write

about your mother, who died of
breast cancer when you were in col-
lege? And why now?
A: I started at about 45. I was at the
same station in my life my mother
was when she first got sick. I was
married, with kids getting older. My
kids looked at me as a par-
ent, not as an autonomous
person with a whole exis-
tence that preceded them.

Q: How does one write

about one's parent with
any degree of objectivity?
A: You've got to be fearless,
but empathetic. A lot of
books about parents fall
into the "mommy dearest"
mode, especially when writ-
ten by relatively younger writers with
grievances against the parent. One of
the advantages of waiting until mid-
dle age to write is you have time to
become a full-fledged adult. You've
made some of the mistakes you'd
have castigated a parent for.

bring up the sound of her voice, but
I wanted this to be a book that was
done ethically as a book of history or
biography, and I needed real answers.
I couldn't make up imagined
quotes for her. It wouldn't have satis-
fied me, and creating situations and
conversations would have been a vio-
lation of my standards as a nonfic-
tion author. I did consider a work of
fiction, but that was not what I
wanted to convey.
I talked to many people. Once they
realized I wanted to hear honest
answers, an unflinching portrait, not
an airbrushed one, they were willing
to open up.

Q: Your family were atheists. How

did they respond to your move
toward a more observant life?
A: As I began to pursue my ques-
tions about religion, they
were supportive. My father
said if I chose to have a bar
mitzvah, I would have to
be serious. They let me
make my own choices.

Q: What do you want
people to take away from
arch for
your book?
hers Life
A: I want them to know it
is worthwhile to ask your
irw,sier
parents questions while
you can. It's worth it to find out
about them as human beings, not
just as parents.
The so-called greatest generation
generally is thought of as the men
who fought the war, but that is not
the whole story. My mother was a
breadwinner as a teenager. Women
Q: How did you re-create a person-
were supportive and strong, and
ality without being able to talk to
that's a story that has been told a lot
her?
less.
A: To me, the process of writing Who
Today's parents are more accessible.
She Was was like talking to her, get-
We live in a more confessional, open
culture, informed by material com-
ting to know her and her times, the
people she knew in so many ways,
fort. My parents were struggling to
feed their family, to get relatives out
the people who dated, lived, loved
and worked with her. Having a voice
of Europe before they got extermi-
is incredible, and writing was like sit- nated. They may have felt, "What's
ting down and talking to her.
so important about being happy?" ❑
Twenty-five years later, I couldn't

