March 1, 2020

Israel Hartman

Israel Hartman grew up in Costa Rica, part of a small and close Jewish community founded largely by immigrants from Poland. He was fortunate to interview his grandfather before he died and learned that as a boy of only 13, the young man saw the growing anti-Semitism in his small Polish shtetl and boarded the first ship to America. With no travel agency or clear destination, he disembarked when the ship stopped in Costa Rica, and later brought his brother over. In this way, as Israel described it, one neighbor told another and one cousin called another, and a Polish Jewish community took root. His father was born in Costa Rica and became a gynecologist, and his parents met within the tight-knit community. Israel has a brother still in Costa Rica, a brother in Israel, and a sister in Houston.

Israel remembers Costa Rica as a simple and beautiful place, rich in nature, where he developed a lasting love for the environment. The community practiced a form of modern Orthodox Judaism; his grandfather walked to synagogue and the family kept Shabbat dinners every week, though they were not strictly religious. He attended Jewish school, learned Hebrew, and took part in a Jewish youth organization. Raised in a strongly Zionist environment, he went to Israel after high school and served three years as a paratrooper in the Israeli army, convinced that the existence of the State of Israel could have prevented the Holocaust. He then returned to Costa Rica to attend medical school, and married a woman he had known since kindergarten.

Wanting the best postgraduate training in medicine, Israel came to the United States. He first stayed in Miami, where his grandfather owned an apartment, to study for his boards, then worked briefly in Dallas before doing his internal medicine specialty at Indiana University in Indianapolis. He returned to Dallas to complete an endocrinology specialty at UT Southwestern, settling there in 1989 with his wife and their triplet daughters. The early years were demanding, with long hours at the university and moonlighting in emergency rooms while his wife raised their girls, who grew up attending the JCC and its camps. Coming from a homogeneous Ashkenazi community, Israel was surprised by the variety of Jewish life in Dallas, and the family eventually found their fit at a Reform congregation. He and his wife remain active members of the community. Grateful for the opportunities Texas has given his family, he says he does not see himself living anywhere else.

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