The Inspiration for Gitel’s Freedom

BY IRIS MITLIN LAV

My mother’s name in the Yiddish language was Itta Gitel.  Many Americans who are Jewish have an English name that they use every day – in my mother’s case it was Anne Gertrude – and a name in the Hebrew or Yiddish language used for ceremonial purposes. Those names were often used within a family, especially among first generation immigrants. 

I’m telling you this because my mother was my inspiration for writing the novel Gitel’s Freedom. I named the main character after her to honor her. Like the portrayal in the novel, my mother’s life was filled with many setbacks and struggles. Her resilience in the face of those problems was, in retrospect, nothing short of amazing and heroic.

As a child and especially as a teenager, I did not appreciate the extent of the resilience she needed to cope with everything that she was experiencing. She had to cope with my father’s poor health and persistent bad luck, and figure out how to support the family when my father couldn’t — at a time when women were paid much less than men for similar jobs.  I often fought with my mother when I was something of a wild teenager. She, in turn, was too tired from all she was managing to be able to effectively control me.  It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to appreciate how well she coped and how much she tried to prevent at least some of the struggles from affecting my young life. Luckily, the real Gitel lived to the age of 90, which was 30 years beyond the end of the novel. I had time to learn to appreciate her.

Even though the novel is based on my family, it took a lot of research and imagination to write it. I wanted the book to be historically correct with respect to the times the characters were living through. The period covered by the novel, 1907 through 1968, included World Wars I and II, and the Korean War, the Great Depression, and a huge number of technological and cultural changes in the United States. For example, the switch from horse-based transportation to automobiles, suffrage for women, and the beginning of the civil rights movement. And, of course, there was a huge surge of immigration, which included the family in Gitel’s Freedom, that transformed the ethnic makeup of the country. I used a variety of books and Internet sources to guide my portrayal of events and places in the novel. There is a “Resources” section at the end of the book that details many of the sources that I used. 

And then there is the imagination part of the equation, certainly critical for every novel. I’m a fan of there being a lot of dialogue in a novel to give a first-hand feel for the characters. Since about half of the novel takes place before I was born, or at least before I was old enough to perceive much about what was happening, the interactions and conversations between characters had to be completely made up – as was much of the dialogue throughout the book. I tried to use my conceptions of the nature of the characters to guide my writing of the dialogues. Of course, since it is a novel rather than a memoir, I had the freedom to depart from the “in real life” personalities of the characters and the events in their lives. For example, Gitel’s husband (my father) says in the novel that he was born in the city of Gomel, Belorussia. In fact, he was born in a small town in the middle of Belorussia and his paternal grandparents brought him as a baby to Gomel, where most of the family lived, after his mother died shortly after giving birth to him. I felt that the more complicated story would just weigh down the flow of the novel, so I made that change.

Similarly, I’ve heard a few versions of the story of how Gitel and Shmuel met, depending on which family member is relating the story. I chose one version, that they met at a Workmen’s Circle meeting, and imagined the circumstances of that first meeting. I have Shmuel as the speaker at that meeting and Gitel becoming enthralled. I have no reason to believe that was what actually happened.

I started thinking about writing Gitel’s Freedom in November 2021, a little over a year after my first novel, A Wife in Bangkok, was published in September 2020.  It went through several iterations before arriving at its final form in 2024, ready to be published in March 2025. I first had the idea of writing it as if it were an intertwined memoir of five of the different characters. Once I had a draft of that version, I thought it was both confusing and boring. Because it was written in the first person, it turned out to be a lot more telling than showing. I asked the publisher, She Writes Press, to recommend someone to do an editorial assessment to help me figure out how to transform it. I consequently re-wrote it to be the story of three generations of women: Gitel’s mother Rayzel, Gitel, and Gitel’s daughter Ilana. When I rewrote it, I did so in past tense. I later decided that it would feel more engaging in the present tense, so I changed it again. I am happy with the current version, but it took me a while to get there.

Finally, although this book is about a Jewish family, I feel that there is a universal quality to their experiences, which is another reason why I wanted to write this book. Although the time, the religion, and the country of origin may be different, I think the women who have immigrated to the United States from Central and South America, or Afghanistan and other places in recent years face similar problems and have the need for, and often find, the type of resilience Gitel exhibits in the novel. 

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IRIS MITLIN LAV grew up in the liberal Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. She went on to earn an MBA from George Washington University and an AB from the University of Chicago, and to enjoy a long career of public policy analysis and management, with an emphasis on improving policies for low- and moderate-income families. She also taught public finance at Johns Hopkins University and George Mason University, and in 1999 received the Steven D. Gold award for contributions to state and local fiscal policy, an award jointly given by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the National Tax Association. Her first novel, “A Wife in Bangkok,” was published in 2020 by She Writes Press. “Gitel’s Freedom” is her second novel. Lav and her husband now live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with Mango, their goldendoodle, and grandchildren nearby. Learn more about her life and work at: www.irismitlinlav.com 

GITEL’S FREEDOM

For fans of Georgia Hunter’s We Were the Lucky Ones and Anita Abriel’s The Light After the War comes a historical narrative about the lives of Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century and one woman’s journey through adversity toward personal freedom.

At an early age, Gitel questions the expected roles of women in society and in Judaism. Born in Belorussia and brought to the US in 1911 as a child, she leads a life constrained by her religious Jewish parents. Forbidden from going to college and pushed into finding a husband, she marries Shmuel, an Orthodox Jewish pharmacist whose left-wing politics she admires. They plan to work together in a neighborhood pharmacy in Chicago—but when the Great Depression hits and their bank closes, their hopes are shattered.

In the years that follow, Shmuel’s questionable decisions, his poor health, and his bad luck plague their marriage and leave them constantly in financial distress. Gitel dreams of going back to school to become a teacher once their one daughter reaches high school, but an unexpected pregnancy quashes that aspiration as well. And when, later, a massive stroke leaves Shmuel disabled, Gitel is challenged to combine caring for him, being the breadwinner at a time when women face salary discrimination, and being present for their second daughter.

Offering an illuminating look at Jewish immigrant life in early-1900s America, Gitel’s Freedom is a compelling tale of women’s resourcefulness and resilience in the face of limiting and often oppressive expectations.

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Category: On Writing