{"id":16764,"date":"2023-02-03T11:36:48","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T16:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/?p=16764"},"modified":"2023-02-07T13:23:35","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T18:23:35","slug":"kramnick-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/kramnick-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"In a Posthumous Memoir, Famed Prof Recalls a Turbulent Childhood\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Long before Isaac Kramnick joined the Cornell faculty, he was a foster child from a family grappling with poverty and mental illness<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Joe Wilensky<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI never felt burdened by the hell that was my early life, or if I did, I repressed it,\u201d Isaac Kramnick writes in his memoir. \u201cRepression and denial, when they work, can be effective coping mechanisms, the backbone of resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A renowned scholar of political thought and history, Kramnick, who passed away in December 2019<\/a>, served on the Cornell faculty for more than 45 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time of his death at age 81, a memoir he\u2019d written\u2014tracing his early life, from his birth into an unstable family through several foster placements and his undergraduate days\u2014remained unpublished. Now, a longtime colleague and friend has helped bring the book\u2014Foster Child: A Midcentury Jewish American Boyhood<\/em>\u2014to print.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"cover<\/figure>
\n

With the blessing of Kramnick\u2019s family, Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies, pitched the book as part of his department\u2019s \u201coccasional publications\u201d series, served as its editor, and contracted with Penn State Press to print it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster Child<\/em> is framed by Kramnick\u2019s investigations, beginning at age 40, into his past\u2014including his biological parents\u2019 lives and travails, siblings he\u2019d never known, and his several placements within the foster-care system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his parents were unable to care for him, he was ultimately raised in rural Massachusetts by an Orthodox Jewish farming family and attended Harvard on a scholarship.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Brann calls publishing the memoir \u201ca labor of love\u201d\u2014a way of keeping Kramnick\u2019s memory alive. \u201cIsaac was a mentor,\u201d Brann says, \u201cand, even more, he became my ideal of the kind of Cornell professor I wanted to try to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to being a widely admired teacher and scholar, Kramnick (the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, Emeritus), helped create the West Campus house system and its faculty-in-residence programming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He later became a de facto Cornell historian, co-authoring\u00a0Cornell: A History, 1940\u20132015<\/em>\u00a0with colleague Glenn Altschuler, PhD \u201976, and helping plan the University\u2019s Sesquicentennial celebration.\u00a0In 2022, a scholarship for first-generation students<\/a> was established in his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Kramnick
Chatting with students in 2008. (Cornell University)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In Foster Child<\/em>, Kramnick chronicles his family\u2019s difficult history: his biological mother, Sarah, struggled with mental health issues, and at the time he was born in 1938, she was in a psychiatric hospital. His father, Max, could not afford to raise him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one month old, Kramnick became a ward of the state. He writes that he has no memory of his first three foster mothers and therefore \u201cno memories of being with them or taken from them, which means I did not consciously brood over any hurt from serial abandonments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one month old, Kramnick became a ward of the state.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But at five, he was placed with the Spiro family in Millis, a small town southwest of Boston. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hit the foster care jackpot, a permanent placement that would take me to young adulthood,\u201d he writes. \u201cMy fourth foster home was the \u2018good Jewish home\u2019 that succeeded far more than the well-intentioned but weary social workers of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts could ever have imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As he writes, while the Spiros showed little affection and demanded strict adherence to household rules and religious norms, they offered stability and set him up for success; his foster mother, Helen, was fiercely devoted to his welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

But Kramnick gives equal credit to Massachusetts\u2019s Division of Child Guardianship, then a national leader for its progressive care. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its social workers and policies, he writes, played \u201ca crucially supportive role in my childhood, responsible in part for my making it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kramnick also describes his story as a particularly Jewish one; the memoir includes many Yiddish terms and particular details and traditions of 1940s and \u201950s Jewish life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he wasn\u2019t observant as an adult, Kramnick remained culturally Jewish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>

\"Kramnick\u2019s
Foster parents Helen and Saul Spiro. <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

His childhood, he writes, \u201cis a story about one of the millions of families who made the monumental move from the old country to an America whose streets would not be paved with gold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After earning his undergrad degree summa cum laude<\/em>, Kramnick studied at Cambridge in the U.K., then returned to Harvard for his PhD. He taught at several elite universities before coming to Cornell in 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a story of resilience,\u201d Brann notes of Foster Child<\/em>. \u201cThis young boy, who really had a hard life, nevertheless managed to escape those burdens and succeed\u2014remarkably so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Fraught with Tension and Fear\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In an excerpt from his memoir, Kramnick reflects on his biological father\u2019s visits to his foster family<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew comfortable in the Spiro house. I knew full well that I was not technically their son, the difference in names made that obvious. But I answered readily to Sonny Kramnick at school and to Sonny Spiro at home, on Village Street, and around the [extended family].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I played with friends and \u201ccousins\u201d or spent my time at school I pushed these familial issues out of mind. Except, of course, when Max came to Millis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kramnick,
At far left, with relatives of his foster parents.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Spiros never referred to Max as \u201cyour father.\u201d He was always \u201cMr. Kramnick\u201d or \u201cold man Kramnick.\u201d In his mid-60s in these years, Max visited about every six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The occasions were fraught with tension and fear. In the days before he arrived Helen belittled him: he was unreliable; he had the effrontery to make the journey on Saturday, when good Jews didn\u2019t travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t need her to tear him down; I dreaded the visits, since they made manifest the anomalies of my life, which I preferred to submerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I dreaded the visits, since they made manifest the anomalies of my life, which I preferred to submerge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

My father usually arrived early in the afternoon, after a long journey by bus or train from Peabody to Boston, a subway across the city, and a bus ride to Millis. Helen and Saul hovered around the house as the time drew near for his arrival. I was noticeably nervous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he entered the house there were a few awkward moments that seemed to last forever as the four of us sat together, then the Spiros left us alone for a while. No food or tea was served. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My memories of Max come from these visits since I recall nothing of him in the first five years of my life. He was a short man with a tiny face, eyes that could twinkle, a small chin, and tight facial muscles around a small mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kramnick
At a sanatorium where he was treated for rheumatic fever. <\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n

I recall vividly his day-old stubble, since he always kissed me when he left, a gesture I found particularly unsettling. The Spiros were not physically demonstrative people, and I was not used to being kissed or hugged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His voice was soft and gentle, though this did not endear him to me. Our stilted conversations were usually about school or sports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He never spoke with me about my brothers or my mother, nor, for that matter, did the Spiros or the social workers. And I certainly never asked about a mother; two fathers and Helen seemed more than enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nor, for that matter, did I know I had living \u201creal\u201d brothers. It would be years, then, before I could appreciate how difficult these visits to me must have been for Max, sandwiched as they were between more frequent visits to his wife and oldest son, both then inmates at the more nearby Danvers State Hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cannot imagine now how painful it must have been for Max to see Sarah and Leon in the neo-Gothic pile of Hathorne Hill that locals still called the \u201cState Lunatic Hospital.\u201d And he did it for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From\u00a0<\/em>Foster Child: A Midcentury Jewish American Boyhood, by Isaac Kramnick and edited by Ross Brann, a publication of the Department of Near Eastern Studies & the Program of Jewish Studies, Cornell University. Copyright \u00a9 2023 by the estate of Isaac Kramnick. Included by permission of the publisher.<\/em> \u2022 The book is available at the Cornell Store<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


All photos provided (unless otherwise indicated).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published February 3, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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