Hadassah Lieberman, HADASSAH: AN AMERICAN STORY

[2:00]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time To Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions. So please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, My website is zibbyowens.com. Okay, now back to this amazing podcast. Welcome to memoir day of my June Book Blast. I am releasing a bunch of really powerful, amazing memoir episodes today, and I really hope you enjoy them. Memoir is like my favorite literary genre. I don't know what yours is, but I love memoirs. I always learn so much. And this is part one of the memoirs I have to release in this book blast. Enjoy. Hadassah Lieberman is the author of a memoir called An American Story. Hadassah has had a rewarding career dedicated to healthcare issues, assisting nonprofit organizations, improving educational standards and promoting international understanding with a particular focus on global women's health. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in government and dramatics from Boston University and an MA in international relations from Northeastern University. She is widely known as Joseph Lieberman's wife. Welcome, Pattasa. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thank you.

[3:33]Hadassah Lieberman: So happy to be here. I really am. Your

[3:37]Zibby Owens: memoir. Oh my gosh. So beautiful. Your family story, the things that your family has gone have gone through. I mean, it was just it was breathtaking to read and go through it again with you. Oh my gosh. What was it like to write about it? Well, there's

[3:53]Hadassah Lieberman: always an underlying, agony to uncover more and more about your parents, about their families, about my family. So I did it because I wanted to convey beyond me as a representative of child of a generation that went through that awful stuff, the blackness of it. And then thank God to have come out to be an immigrant to The US and to live and to have light coming to me and out of me as I grew was a miracle. So it helped me. It was difficult. And yet it reestablished everything I was ever taught and felt about being an American. Wow.

[4:48]Zibby Owens: Well, that's such a it's such a powerful way to turn what could be such a just completely mind bogglingly traumatic depressive experience and transitioning it to something so beautiful. So that takes a lot of that's it's just impressive. Not everybody can do that. Thank you. Was real. My parents were very positive

[5:10]Hadassah Lieberman: despite everything that happened to them. And I know my father in particular, my mother wanted me to be strong, to move forward and to help say what needs to be said, to share and share with my children. And thank God, we now have 12 grandchildren. So I have that obligation, that responsibility, that history.

[5:37]Zibby Owens: I've always been just so darkly fascinated by the Holocaust. I've read so many books about it and just I sort of can't get enough. I feel like in a not in a know, not in a self destructive way, just like, I can't wrap my head around it, no matter how much I read and stories like, you know, your dad and the march, it just like your sister, sister and the I don't know. I just I feel like if I just read it enough, I can conceptualize how that could happen. And yet I can't. It doesn't work. You know what I mean? It's beyond. And there's so many more stories of things I didn't hear about

[6:14]Hadassah Lieberman: in my mother's diary, my father's book. And there are no answers.

[6:19]Zibby Owens: And that's the problem. And we don't really in our modern world, in some ways, don't get it. We don't want and some people don't want to get it. They want to get away from it. I interviewed Chris Bajillion, who's like a thriller writer, wrote Midwives and All This yesterday, and he was talking about the Armenian genocide and saying that without the Holocaust or without that, you know, the two sort of went hand in hand. Yes.

[6:43]Hadassah Lieberman: Yes. It's awful. And that's why we are obligated to teach, to learn, and to teach our children how to behave, to be civil, and how to be nice to people, how to not judge people to be tolerant. And that's how we want to create a better society. The words in Hebrew are Tikkun Olam, which means repair the world. And that's really something I think is so important.

[7:14]Zibby Owens: Yes, my daughter learns about that in Hebrew school on the weekends. And I, again, I am yeah, we just had to do a video about it for end of the year ceremony. So yes, I'm familiar with that. How old is she? I have four kids, but this particular this particular daughter is almost 14. So Oh, that's nice. So I know the thing that I can't believe is when people feel like it didn't even happen. But then I the only parallel I see is that some people weren't even believing the coronavirus was happening as it was happening. I know. Right? So then I'm like, well, okay. You just can't reason with anyway. And I actually I did this whole paper in college about children of holocaust survivors because I was so interested in what the sort of transgenerational effects of that were and what happens, especially for displaced persons camp, victims and families, and where do they all go. And, I mean, this whole notion of inherited trauma, how it's, like, in your DNA. What do you think about that? And when does it end? Does it end? Like, do your grandchildren? Do you feel like they will carry this around? Like, How do you think that works? Well, our daughter,

[8:18]Hadassah Lieberman: who's now in her 30s and has five boys and lives in Israel, our youngest, I really think she has that feeling inside her. All my kids do. She in particular, it's sort of surprising because she's the youngest and the furthest away. But it's right there. And with our children too. And it's something we don't emphasize daily. We don't do that. But it's very important. My father, Al Bashalem, may his soul rest in peace. My father used to say when he marched through and up to Russia, you know, cold in Siberia, so many people died along the way as they marched. And he said, watching them die, he said to himself, there's no one to bury them. There's no one to say Kaddish, the memorial prayer for them. And that's amazing. And it was something they had to accept. Because and some of these people cut the fleshes off of dead horses to have meat to eat. So this is such a fantastically horrible story. We can't believe it happened to us. And how can anything go on today? Anything, whether you know, it's one holocaust after another one smaller things, you know, by listening to words out there on the streets, whether it's from leaders or people that are inappropriate, we can't allow that to continue. We must influence people towards the good. And we have to start with our own children, our own societies.

[10:09]Zibby Owens: I love that. My other question reading this book really was it's so evident how in love your husband is with you still. His introduction to you and how he fell in love at the beginning and how he just seems to worship you, at least on the page. I'll go with that. How do you keep that up in a marriage for a lifetime? And that sort of sense of love and wonder and I don't know, like all the butterflies?

[10:35]Hadassah Lieberman: You know, look, butterflies change with age. I am very lucky. After a divorce, I met someone who loved my son, learned to love my son, and I learned to love his two teenagers when I met them, which in itself, it's hard to love your own teenagers sometimes. And so we really worked hard at it. And one thing about Joe, when my roommate said to me, I want you to meet him. He's a politician, but he's a good guy. I laughed at that. I thought, what is she saying? And Joe and I have been married now, think it's thirty six years, thirty eight years now. And you know what, we're very lucky. That doesn't mean every minute, every day is perfect, every hour is perfect. But our obligation to each other is to be able to talk honestly, and to be able to not talk about everything. There were times when we were bonding with our children, I thought, Oh my God, I can't believe they don't really like me yet in the beginning. And there are things you can't say because everything takes time. And we have to we see with this crazy virus, how every day you have to make something different. You have to put a bow on you have to put you have to make an effort. Why are we making efforts for the outside world sometimes and not our own spouses? Why aren't we doing some jokes, some perfume? It's important. And in some ways, understand women's lib and you know, after I was part of that and feminism, etc, I'm not explaining, I'm not allowing people to feel freer, I think about saying anything that isn't totally liberated. But you know what, truthfully, relationships take a lot of work. And it's not only, oh, I can do this, I can do that. And it's great to be able to succeed and simultaneously take care that you don't alienate each other or find something else of more interest. This dangerous. And we have to think that way. And I know it's hard. I mean, look, I got divorced. So obviously, I didn't do that whole thing perfectly. But we've never talked badly about each other's spouses. And we've worked hard, we never use step in our marriage to any children, because he married me knowing I had a son, and I would not have married him, or he me, if we didn't know that we could potentially be people who showed our love to each other's children and make them our children. There's too much of that that goes on today in the world of divorce. People don't realize how respectful you have to be of each other's parent. After all, it's their parent. And to that parent, they're like their skin, their arm, their leg. It's hard work. And nothing as we know comes easily.

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[17:26]Zibby Owens: Thank you. I'm divorced, and I'm remarried newly, not too newly, three years now, I guess. But anyway, that was particularly relevant, awesome advice for me. So thank you. Thank you for that. My husband, I had four kids when we got married. So as his own, although I have my ex husband. So yes, we have the same sort of It's

[17:47]Hadassah Lieberman: just as you know what I always said, you have to put boots on to climb the hills, because they're hard hills and they're hard. And there are times it can eat you up inside because things aren't perfect. And it takes time. But to know to have that strength, to not talk about it every time it happens is so important. I remember my oldest daughter, who I acquired, someone asked her, she's quoted in my book, I have quotes from all of our children, which was important. And they were pretty honest. Someone asked her, Do you mind when it does it calls you her daughter? And Becca answered, No. And, you know, Becca and I and it was hard at first because her father is marrying someone else, you know, the whole bit. It was very hard. And now I have such deep feelings for her. And I know she feels that way toward me. We are very close. We love each other. And my little one, that's the funniest thing, because she came from Joe and me. And when she was little, she used to say, Mommy, I'm the only one who doesn't have a parent to go to on a weekend. And it was so funny. Heard that we realized as we had set it up is we didn't say anything negatively. And so therefore she felt like she was being cheated.

[19:23]Zibby Owens: That's really funny. Yeah. Yeah, we did not have kids together. But I was like, if we have kids together, then we don't have any time off. I'm kidding.

[19:33]Hadassah Lieberman: Can't think that way. No, I'm joking. I know. Know. Know. I I would have loved to. Hani really made our circle strong. And they're saying it in the quotes, she made our circle stronger. And like she says, Well, my parents are both my parents, and each of my siblings only have one, you know? So it's so Who knows?

[19:57]Zibby Owens: I know. I know. So how was it writing this book? Like, what was the experience? Was it emotional for you? Was it like, is it something you felt for a long time you needed to do and now you finally did it? Or like, what was how tell me about that. I, you know, after

[20:13]Hadassah Lieberman: we found my mother's diary and translated it and had her and it's in the book too. Thought, you know, it was translated and by someone at the Holocaust Museum so I could read it was originally in Czech. And she said, I wrote this diary, and it's short, and I can't write anymore. And you can read that in the book. I look to my children to complete things. Well, when I saw that, I thought, Oh my God, I don't have a choice. I have an obligation. And you know what, to be who I am, to have my mother write that in your diary, to have my husband been a US senator run for public office to have been part of that campaign and to think I have to do this. I have to write this book because I want this to come out. I want to share with people. Not that I need to sell copies of the book and the reality of publishing and everything. You don't sell that many copies, but I want to get this out to have people read it. And that's really why I ask people to join me in this because and I talk about divorce and nothing specific. I don't discuss anything. Because my ex, as I say in the book, we have had exes, you had a first child with that ex, you had a first marriage. And you can't deny that. You can't discard that because that's not fair to your children. And I write about all of those different immigration, religion, you know, everything like that. So they're all the subjects that we are concerned about and talk about and live through today.

[22:21]Zibby Owens: So do you feel like your obligation has been fulfilled? Like, do you feel like okay? Or do you want to keep digging or trying to find more or is it something that's never really going to be done? Well, on the one hand, it will never be done,

[22:36]Hadassah Lieberman: because we don't understand it. Totally. We don't get it. Totally. On the other hand, I did it. I don't intend to say any more on the subject. There's so much out there on the show on the Holocaust. I'm not in competition. I don't have anything more to add. But what I wanted to do is start with the blackness and end up with the story of me running, competing for the I speak for democracy contest. And my father, looking at the essay I wrote, and of course, he had to edit it a little bit. And all of a sudden, I won it. And I was in the convertible with the Massachusetts Congressman, who wasn't Ted Kennedy at that time. And I was waving to the people and my parents always went to Memorial Day and stuff like that, and parades and masses. And they were looking at me sitting in that car, waving, standing, and they were touched. I saw a tear in their eye, of course, you know, look where we had come. This was the land of liberty, the home of the brave and free. Where else? And my mother, my father was an art Zionist, wanted to go to Israel. But it was in 4849. And there was a war, and my mother couldn't do another war. She couldn't do it. So we ended up coming to The United States with my aunt, Roshnini, and Moshe Bach, uncle and aunt. The Hungarian words for uncle and aunt. And she had no children. So my brother and I were like her children. So she did things like get me pastry and this and that, you know, all the time. More like a grandma. Love it. Everybody needs someone to bring them pastry all the time. Oh, I know. Know.

[24:44]Zibby Owens: A couple shneggs and you're

[24:46]Hadassah Lieberman: on your way. And someone who doesn't care, okay, you're gaining weight. Don't worry about it.

[24:51]Zibby Owens: Exactly. Oh my goodness. Do you look back on the time when you were so in the public eye and ever miss that? Do you ever miss it? Or are you happy to have it in the past? Or how do you I feel about say

[25:05]Hadassah Lieberman: it was a unique experience. Started with Joe is running, I met him, he was running for attorney general. And then and before that he had run for state office in Connecticut. And then he ran for the US Senate And then down to 2,000, he was on the national ticket. So truthfully, when you go through an experience like that, you can't say, I didn't like it. Was it overwhelmingly, physically difficult? Did it take everything out of you time wise? But it was the most incredible experience for me. And to realize that through politics, you can get out there and talk to people. You can get out there. There were people in the Midwest. I'll never forget when I was there with my own plane, you know, we all had our schedules. And I would walk through groups and I had no idea if they were voting Republican or Democrat. And they came up to me and said, I like your husband. He's a religious man. I like him. I was so touched by that inside me. It was such an American experience. At that time, We were together. And what difference does it make if you have a different opinion? The kind of thing we used to sit down at tables and talk to people, whether they agreed with you or not. That didn't matter. We talked to each other, maybe they could convince you, you could convince them. That's a difference to today. And I don't like that difference. And we have to try to change that as we talk to each other. Very true. That's why your program is important.

[27:09]Zibby Owens: Oh,

[27:10]Hadassah Lieberman: thank you. I mean that. Mean that. Do

[27:14]Zibby Owens: you have any advice to aspiring authors having lived through now this book writing publishing process? Okay,

[27:22]Hadassah Lieberman: my advice, and this is also having spent time had spent time exchanging things with friends who were trying to publish their books is you've got to let your ego go, because it can be debilitating. Because you don't know, you can get so many different nos. And you think, oh my goodness, I thought this was great. People should get it, they should read it. All kinds of stuff out there. And also, in some ways, of the books people want to publish, people would like to publish, not want to publish, have more violence, have more sex, have you know, it becomes a different book. That's not the book I was trying to read. Right. So I would say it's tough publishing. That's why a lot of people are publishing their own books. There's a whole new trend. There's so many different trends out there. And after COVID still don't know which things are going to make it which places will be successful, which will fall down. It's a mystery tour, like everything today. I know that's what I keep saying. I use the word mystery too much. So I would advise good luck, work hard and know that despite that, there may not be that much interest. So be tough as you go forward as I have my hay fever pills.

[28:58]Zibby Owens: Well, Hajafa, thank you. This was so nice. I was so excited to get a chance to talk to you today. And it's just been such a pleasure and I just can't thank you enough. It's been it's really meaningful to me. So thank you. Well, you and good luck with your 14 year old. Thank you. And

[29:17]Hadassah Lieberman: with everything, just be strong and move forward, as I'm sure you're doing anyway. Thank you. And thank you for interviewing me and thank you for publicizing what I'm trying to convey to your audiences.

[29:33]Zibby Owens: So important. It's really, really important. So it's an honor. Thank you, sweetie. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to part of my June Book Blast. I hope you enjoy it. Come back tomorrow for more. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and moms don't have time to read books. Also, up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.