February 26, 2020

Esther Cronson

Esther's parents and grandparents were from Poland, and her grandparents perished in the Holocaust. Her parents escaped, with her mother following two brothers to Cali, Colombia, where the family took up shoemaking. Her mother saved enough to bring Esther's father from Poland, and together they built a business that grew into a small general store selling shoes, notions, and whatever was in fashion. The youngest of four children by about eight years, Esther grew up helping in the store, even working as a young cashier. Her mother emphasized education, and all the children graduated high school around age fifteen. The family kept a modestly kosher home in a country without kosher facilities, taking chickens to the shochet and salting meat themselves.

Esther attended the Jewish school in Cali from kindergarten through twelfth grade with a close-knit class of immigrant children, many the children of Russian, Romanian, and Sephardic families. After graduating early and feeling unsure of her path, she received a scholarship to a program in Jerusalem to study Hebrew and religion, agreeing to return and teach in her high school. She loved Israeli life and culture, though she disliked teaching young children. Back in Colombia she entered university to study psychology, living at home and commuting as was customary. She later followed her brothers, who had come to the United States for graduate study and medical training, moving first to Minnesota and then to Texas Tech in Lubbock, where she earned her master's degree.

In Lubbock, Esther worked in mental health, directing an early day hospital program, and met her husband Harold on Rosh Hashanah, which they considered their anniversary. When he entered a psychiatry residency at Timberlawn Hospital, she came to Dallas in 1982, about six months ahead of him, and found work in Jewish vocational counseling near the JCC. The couple raised their son Jonathan, who attended the JCC preschool and later Sunday school at Temple Emanu-El. Deeply connected to the JCC over the years, Esther counts among her proudest accomplishments earning a third-degree black belt in taekwondo, through which she made friends from around the world. After surviving cancer she stepped away from taekwondo and embraced yoga, finding a warm, welcoming community she treasures.

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