Batchelor Girl by Rivka Hartman: Article in Australian Jewish News, 3 December 1987.
Dot Bloom is a soap-opera scriptwriter wno spends her time in between re-writes escaping from the clutches of Auntie Esther and Uncle Isaac. They are trying to match her up with a single Jewish male doctor, and contemplating a relationship with an attractive divorced white male lawyer, whose conversation and friends are stupifyingly boring. Dorothy Bloom’s situation is only too familiar to the growing number of professional Jewish women in our community for whom it is difficult to find a suitable male partner. Estranged by helpful,but patronising relatives (you’re still attractive, darling, if only you’d make the most of yourself), she is unimpressed by the available prospects who desire love and companionship but are not prepared to degrade themselves.
Rivka Hartman, the daughter of two medical practitioners, Len Hartman and the late Dora Bialystok, was born and bred in Lygon Street, Carlton, where her father was the local doctor. She became involved in experimental theatre at La Mama while studying medicine at Melbourne University in the early ’70s. She played roles in La Mamma’s productions of Dimboola and The Coming of Stork, and she wrote and directed two plays there — Dream Girl and The Psychiatrist.
In the meantime, Rivka is not idly resting on her laurels, but collaborating with Tobsha Learner (another talent ed young Jewish writer, author of Witch Play) on another film script, atragi-comedy with the tentative title of Judith.