Fanny Hartman
Fanny Hartman was born and raised in San Jose, Costa Rica. Her father's family came from Poland, following relatives to Costa Rica as conditions in Europe worsened before World War II, while her mother's family had settled in Mexico, living near Cabo San Lucas before moving to Mexico City. Her parents met and married, then made their home in Costa Rica. Fanny was the youngest of four children, and her mother died of breast cancer when Fanny was six. She grew up in a very small, tightly knit Jewish community, attending a Jewish school from kindergarten through high school with a graduating class of about 21 students, taking part in youth activities and the community's temple and JCC.
Fanny married her high school sweetheart, and both spent a year in Israel, where he served as a paratrooper and she studied at Hebrew University. After he completed medical school in Costa Rica, the couple came to the United States for his residency and fellowship. With their toddler triplet daughters, they lived first in Miami, then Indiana, where he trained, before returning to Dallas for his endocrinology fellowship. They later moved to Arlington when he opened his practice there, joining a Reform temple where their daughters attended Sunday school. Fanny found the Midwest cold and unfamiliar but grew to love Dallas for its warmth, its people, and the ease of traveling back to Costa Rica.
A graphic designer by training, Fanny worked as a freelancer and helped manage the business side of her husband's medical practice. When her daughters left for college, she took up glasswork and now enjoys her own glass studio. All three daughters pursued careers in the arts, working as an art therapist and as art conservators at institutions including the Dallas Museum of Art and museums in New York. Fanny reflects on the differences between the small, traditional Ashkenazi community of Costa Rica and the larger, more varied Jewish community of Dallas, and remains deeply connected to her siblings and friends in Costa Rica while cherishing her life in Dallas.
Full Transcript
my name is may siebel it is march 1st 2020 and i'm interviewing fanny hartmann for the one story to time project viva shalom celebrating latin american jews in dallas good afternoon fanny will you please tell us where you are from originally i'm originally from san jose costa rica costa rica yeah okay talk about when and why your family originally immigrated to costa rica yeah so my father's family they were from poland and they uh before the awards started they saw that everything was going down really fast and they had a couple of iron calls that already left and they were in costa rica so they
they followed them and that's how they got to costa rica and then my mom's family actually they went to mexico so my mom grew up in mexico and then she met my father and then they got married and they went to costa rica so when her family got to mexico i guess there was like a quarter of how many people can be in the city so they need to live outside the city so they actually live by cabo san lucas around that area you know but you know not in the first sight i guess and then uh after when they were a little older they
were three sisters they they moved to mexico city yeah okay so the same story they came right before the world started and so how did your parents make well my um i had an ankle well that's it i had a gun so there was this man that uh had two daughters when he got to costa rica and his wife had died in poland having birth to another baby so he was a widow and somehow he met this or you know maybe it was like a shield and uh even this woman from mexico they married they came from costa rica there were two other sisters in
mexico and both of them married men from costa rica like they came after the sister tell us about your own life growing up in costa rica okay so um we were two brothers and two sisters and the little one and my mom died very young from breast cancer so i was the youngest one and i was six-year-old and then i have a brother three years older than me and another brother uh five years older than me and a sister seven years older than me so um we grew up just with my father he worked hard and uh i'm still we're very close my siblings and
i you know that i'm the only one that lives outside costa rica and then my dad will marry when i was around 12 and i have another sister for this from the second married but um it was really nice growing up in costa rica uh at that time nobody knew what costa rica was now everybody wants to go to costa rica you know it's a hot place to go but it was this little town and uh you said you were from costa rica and people thought you were from puerto rico nobody really knew what costa rica was so um i grew up uh always like
in the jewish community that was the way it was you know we um as a jewish kid you were to jewish everyday school it was like no that's what it was yes so i went from kindergarten through high school and it's a very small jewish community so my class was small actually and we were um 21 kids so i grew up with the same 21 kids mostly sometimes i get them from israel maybe that work their parents for the embassy and they work for a few years there but like these 21 kids like since preschool until high school we graduate together and uh we we
are like a little families here and we we uh do like a classroom every five years and they you know it's funny but all the ones that lived in costa rica most of their kids are classmates in the same school yes nowadays not everybody goes there is school there's a lot of american schools and you know there is uh other options but a lot of the kids still going to them to a jewish school called westman and then uh also we had them like the youth organization that it was culturally hanoi and so the weekends we the same people we used to go there and
uh it really i thought it was really nice because then we had a jccc also very nice still there it's a very nice place and uh and we grew up in um temple that uh that was the only one in costa rica at the time so um that was it it's um for me it was really different when we came to the states that was one of the things that like i don't know this is i think a lot of people in america will tell you this but this is kind of latin american style like you go to temple and like they follow like the
orthodox um way like woman upstairs smell downstairs and they follow like all the readings and inside everything needs to be kosher but the jewish community as it is like nowadays maybe a little bit more people are religious but people only at the temple are religious most of them so nobody really was kosher in their houses or we always you know ride our cars and everything you know even i think the jccc was open on shabbat but the temple was you know they follow all the looks that's so for us was kind of like where do we go you know here in the states so we
try a little bit of everything do you still have family and customers everybody's in question everybody everybody yes all my siblings are in costa rica um uh we visit each other a lot i go it's very easy actually you know to go to costa rica it's like a four hour flight from dallas yeah so um we are really close and every time we have like a sim card wherever everybody comes and every whatever is in costa rica i go so yeah we we visit each other yes so how and why did you make the decision to leave costa rica so um [Music] my husband like
i think we were like high schools with hearts and he's a year older than me and also like um most of the kids also when graduate high um we used to go to israel for a year i was i went to hebrew university for a year my husband went here before and he decided to join the army in israel it was that he was a paratrooper in a select you know um it's called san hanim and it's one of the what if it's called so we were there and then he finished the army he came back to costa rica and he went to medical school
there and he finished and he you know we wanted to come and for him to do his residency training and then he did his fellowship and then we say we uh so did he do his residency here yeah um like his residency training he lived in indiana at iu and then his fellowship is an endocrinologist he did uh beautiful question in dallas and then he just stayed so that's how you ended up once you made the decision to leave uh how are you feeling about that i mean you would have grown up there yeah it was a difficult decision and it's just gonna surprise you
but it was tough because we have triplets they we had baby triplets they were very little i mean they were uh almost two years old when we came to the states so it was a handful yes so um first we went uh to miami and my husband studied for his boards that they're pretty difficult poor thing but i thought he would do them once if you don't pass those words i'm out of here keep asking that's why we're here and then um we came to dallas and uh we're very close friends with the hybrid davidson his uh doctor in dallas my husband was at his
office doing some work waiting for his birds to come and uh meanwhile my kids went here to the jccc um today i guess it's when they were like two years old around two and a half but actually we went to the morning plane when there was this uh there was this little j in plano yes so then so he passes boards and uh first actually they choose him to go to new york and we said there's no way we can live in the city with three little babies and then uh we went to indiana really good program my kids went to the jccc preschool in
indiana and then we came back to that so it was something we really like dallas and he that accepted to do his fellowship at beautiful question so we came back to dallas um what were your feelings and first impressions of the us when you came here well i have been in the us before you know like visiting and um and uh i guess you know it that was not like this scary part because i knew that i could be like in contact you know with my family but it was an overwhelming time you know with three little kids and my husband was always at the
hospital i used to take my kids to see him at the hospital yeah we used to bring like sushi whatever and but for me one of the i guess one of the biggest shocks that i didn't expect that's when you know we moved to indiana this really was like another different thing that what i grew up you know like really cold very um very different you know at those you know those times now there's a lot more maybe mexican i think people uh more latino people in indiana but ethiopia was very very very american you know like people used to see me speaking spanish and
it was like you know my husband at the hospital he was doing internal medicine and they used to call him you know to deliver babies because nobody spoke spanish you know at the hospital and uh so my kids entered the day and one day my the teacher called me and she's like you know we just wanted to tell you you know that your kids are sweating at school we have haters inside school you don't need to dress them like that like that is there was wrestling back like to go skiing every day you know it was so different for me but we enjoy it very
much but i i really wanted to go back to dallas and i knew some people already in dallas and i i kind of loved that so they offered my husband to stay in indiana he blamed me i didn't care yes i i mean it was people were very nice but i really wanted to add to that so you had friends here so how was your adjustment to moving to dallas um you know i always have a little bit of a different story having triplets you know and i was for me it was very important that my kids were individuals they looked very much alike three
years and i really wanted them to be like each one their own person so for me for me it was very important that they were in separate classes you know at school and i had a all this other set of things that really don't have and um uh so we moved here and they were starting first grade and so they went to solomon shelter for first grade but then it came second grade and they closed one of the classes there were only two classes and i was like debating and i decided to go to public school after that and um when my husband finished um
the fellowship and they really needed an endocrine doctor in arlington so he started his practice in arlington and then we moved to arlington because it became really difficult you know with the kids that they were here and he was there so we moved to arlington so they actually grew up later there they went to school there and we used to join um the temple in arlington there is a reformed temple and a few years ago they came and they have but it was in the latest year so they went to sunday school there and you know they graduated high school from high school and i
have three pretty good girls yes i'm very impressed very very proud yes and where are they now what are they doing so um like for nine years we had nobody here because they were all in college and you know so um sharon she went uh the hallway at ut in austin and she is an art therapist she works with special people and in the hospital with cancer patients and and our social child autistic people or people with disabilities so um that's sharon but she went to beauty and then um laura she when she started school she went to portland she was very sure that she
worked at horrible she wanted to start art and she wanted to go to portland and then uh she found about this program all the way in delaware and she interviewed and she moved from coast to coast and she's she is an art conservator she did her master's also in delaware's as an art conservator after leaving she worked in like in the netherlands in madrid in uh you know at the prado in the met and then the last years i'm very happy to say that the dance museum of heart brought her and she is the art conservator at the dma and diana she went to school
in washington state first she graduated there in um in art as well and when she finished she worked in the art fields and then she wanted to do also the program that laura did she was not so sure that what she wanted but she she decided uh to take she because she only studied like studio art she needed to take all these chemistries and so she did it and she worked in that work at the studio and then she went into the program it's a tough program to get in because they only take 10 people a year and uh so diana also is an art
conservator and she worked at momma new york she's been in woman she's she's in new york we're in all this artistic i think that went up for me okay so tell us about you so i went to college in costa rica i'm a graphic designer that's what i was trained and i work as a freelancer for many years but then for many years then i actually joined my husband i had done a lot of the business part of his sort of practice that he has and so i worked with him a lot and when my kids left to college i found myself with a lot
of time in my hands and i was always interested in class so i went actually like to upstate new york to take a glass class and start with this and there and then i have a glass studio that i enjoy a lot so i work with class and um and i think yeah they got it from me but you know all of them really have um careers but they need to have science an art that you know sharon is a therapist and and laura and diana both of them needed to to have for these chemistry classes you know and it's a lot of chemistry what
they do and you know they take x-rays and and mris of the paintings and yeah so i guess they're a bit of a mix and sharing now she got married and we have a brown baby what differences in jewish customs have you found between um costa rica yeah and dallas i guess the biggest was like it said that we grew up in a very small community and you know dallas is really big we just brought out a lot of activities a lot of different choices you know so for me was the the biggest shock you know or you know it's um like i said it
was still today you know i go to costa rica i know everybody you it's uh i get together with my friends it's the same little community it got a little bit more open you know but um but of course here it's more open or you know you have a lot of choices like i said a lot of people everywhere i think i like that people go and always meet new people hearing anything still today i go to costa rica i mostly know everybody you know in the last years there's a lot of new people in costa rica that have migrated like from a lot of
latin american countries with problems you know like venezuela colombia or actually it's a very stable country there's like very democratic you know army it's maybe one of the only countries in the world with the army and um so a lot of people when there were problems in argentina so now that i go to costa rica there's a lot of people that i don't that i don't know and um also one of the things that it's um so i told you we when we first uh you know when we were kids we grew up and there was the school and the temple and the jewish community
from costa rica very prosperous and um they moved the temple to this it's like extraordinary yeah we can uh google it like charades and it's like it's like an architectural beauty yes so that's it like like i said it's a very big temple for everybody but in the last years also a lot of americans you know they go and retire in costa rica so there is also a reform community now that it was not in costa rica and then um and then it's been years but there is ahabak and then there are some temples uh we think like in two beaches in kosovo a lot
of people you know a lot of israelis are you know that lives at the beach they actually there's like um this song called santa teresa or what happened is a lot of israelis that actually they were pretty smart they put a lot of land they sold it for much much money and they stay there's a lot of israelis and for tourists there's a habat also at the beach now and and yeah but all of that is very different for me um were there some jewish cultural traditions and foods and things yes and that are in costa rica that are different from what you experience here
what did you bring with you yeah you know um this uh most like i was dead even when i was grown up i i'm gonna set like 95 of the jewish community in costa rica uh came from poland from germany so where are all ashkenazis you know now there's some separating that have come from other places but they all it's a totally nasty community in the oregon next to us you know there's panama it's a very sephardic community they came from other places but in costa rica most most of the people came from poland i think and you know from germany so yeah we still
you know um my sister is a very good book so i always call her like give me a recipe for this and that and i and i we like for the holidays you know we cook very ashkenazi yes and i have friends here like one of my very best friends she's it's a party so she cooks totally differently different she's from um from colombia and i think they came like from spain so yeah that's very interesting for me you know that was jewish food you know and everybody was so you didn't find the foods here any different from what you would grow up with no
and actually my husband he had an aunt it was you know i guess it was like that they read where that everything was more low-key yes and uh so she used to poop for the weddings and all the permits funds and everything was just like at the jewish community center you know so yeah she was the hope for all the celebrations so what what have you imparted to your girls about you know growing up in costa rica and that's where their relatives and their ancestors yes it's settled they grew up going a lot to and you know there's always this cultural shock and my kids
they're americans you know they came here and they are you know they will work in the arts and they're very open-minded you know i grew up with this small community you know and uh and they you know i guess they taught me also you know that and i that there's more than this you know so uh i said you know i grew up with 20 kids and you know they graduated which i don't know 500 so this has been very very different yes and um you know they at least in like i said different parts of the country and of the world so i think
it's i love that from the states that they had all these opportunities and all these uh for me i i sometimes think if we had stayed in costa rica and there was this small jewish school what what will happen i don't know if they would have gone there because uh they get now they're smaller and smaller you know also the classes because kids go to another schools and like my one of my nieces graduated and there were six girls in the class other years they're like 20 but anyways there's never three classes for my kids so that i love from here for me really was
very very important that they that they are and they are very much half each one of them their own lives so so that i really like that they have opportunity here a lot of opportunities they they really have really um really exciting and different jobs that also i don't think that they would have had in costa rica whatever you're gonna do there with uh with a master's in our conservation you know and my daughter diana she's specialized in modern art you know and what are you gonna do with that there so yeah opportunities here is there anything else you'd like to add i think that
uh i just wanna that i really love but to live in dallas i think uh i love dallas people i love um the weather i love that you it's easy to travel anywhere it's um uh i have a lot of latin friends american friends and um i would only imagine myself living somewhere else not in dallas uh tell me about your your latin friends here do you all have i mean particularly latin american jewish friends or um mostly yes but i also have some friends um i have a good friend she's from costa rica it's kind of a funny story but my husband found out
that my brother had thyroid cancer but it's okay he came to have his tiger taken out here and we were at some point when there was some cold still and somebody came into the room and asked that she came to translate and we told her like we don't need anybody you know she left and then she came back and she said sorry but are you from costa rica i can hear an accent and we met like that and uh her husband is also a doctor and uh they're actually warm hormones and they live in dallas and uh and but most of my friends i guess
they are from the jewish community yes yes well thank you very much thank you wonderful thank you this is so nice that uh that you're doing this with all the latino i think the latino community in dallas and giving a lot to the others also a lot of good people and from a lot of different places so i think this is very nice great thank you thank you