Friday Nov 14

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Home & Movies

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Matt’s Notes

Papa doesn’t say what movies he saw on this night, but some choices included:

  • The Fast Worker, a light comedy starring Reginald Denny
  • East of Broadway, the story of a young man who fails his entrance exam for the New York City police force because he thinks the Tropic of Capricorn is in the Bronx
  • The Lover of Camille, and adaptation of the play “Deburau” deemed by the New York Times to be a mere shadow of its stage production
  • The Greatest Love of All, an interesting-sounding experiment in which, it seems, the film stops in the middle and its actors appear live on stage to finish out the story. The Times liked the conceit but not the story: “This novelty is worth seeing because of the combination of actors in shadow form and in the flsh, but cuts should be made in both chapters.”
  • The Garden of Weeds, a disappointing effort, according to the Times, from James Cruz, director of the huge hit The Covered Wagon. (The Covered Wagon played for over a year in New York and was Photoplay Magazine‘s choice for best picture of 1923. I’ve never seen it, but the VHS version will soon be on its way.)
  • The Battling Orioles, a slapstick comedy written and directed by Hal Roach.
  • He Who Gets Slapped, a serious drama starring Lon Chaney and called “faultless” by the Times.
  • The Beloved Brute, a Western starring the ex-boxer Victor McLagien, who would go on to receive a best actor Academy Award for his role in 1935’s The Informer and a nomination for his supporting role in 1952’s The Quiet Man.

Other films in town included Hot Water with Harold Lloyd, Dante’s Inferno, The Ten Commandments and The Iron Horse.

Saturday Nov 15

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Initiation of O.S.Z. members
at “Yavne” Camp
Bensonhurst

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“O.S.Z.” stands for Order Sons of Zion (a.k.a. B’nai Zion) the oft-mentioned Zionist fraternal order to which Papa belonged, and the “‘Yavne’ Camp Bensonhurst” is one of its Brooklyn chapters.

As we’ve seen, B’nai Zion chapters often nicknamed themselves after legendary Jewish heroes and ancient landmarks in Palestine (like the Bar Cochba Camp and Kinereth Camp previously mentioned in Papa’s diary). The city of “Yavne” appears in the Bible and, it seems, also became a seat of rabbinical scholarship and a holy place after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. (Nowadays its a modern city in Israel.)

Papa was Master of Ceremonies of his own Judaically-nicknamed camp, “The Maccabean,” and in that capacity often participated in initiation ceremonies for other camps. I’m not yet sure where “Yavne” met, but I’ll add the Bensonhurst neighborhood to the map of Where Papa’s Been.

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References for this post:

Sunday Nov 16

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at Rifke’s in E.N.Y.
at Pennsylvania Ave. Synagogue
& Kessler Club

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Matt’s Notes

Papa’s trips to East New York always included stops at the Kessler Zion Club and his friend Rifke’s (when last seen at her place, he was pitching a group of women on the gowns he’d just started selling on the side), though this is the first time he’s mentioned the Pennsylvania Avenue Synagogue.

My uncanny powers of deductive reasoning tell me this synagogue was located on Pennsylvania Avenue, a north-south artery on the western side of East New York, not far from the “new law” tenements that had cropped up in the neighborhood since the passing of the Tenement House Act of 1901. These tenements boasted at least one bathroom for every two families and relatively plentiful windows, so Jewish immigrants, drawn by these amenities and encouraged by new subway construction, had been flocking to the area from Manhattan’s Lower East Side for most of the early 1900’s.

Like his bretheren, Papa must have seen East New York as a sort of promised land. Perhaps, whenever he emerged from the Pennsylvania Avenue BMT stop and beheld the surrounding wide streets and airy skies, he grew starry-eyed and dreamy and thought to himself: One day, I too will live in Brooklyn.

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References for this post:

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Image sources:

BMT subway map sample from nycsubway.org.

Pennsylvania Ave. looking south, 1923. Courtesy of Brooklynpix.com. Just for laughs, here’s another shot of Pennsylvania Ave. from the same source:

Monday Nov 17

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Movies & home

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Matt’s Notes

Papa went to the movies the other day, so the list of what he might have seen hasn’t grown that much. Still, here are a couple of newcomers listed in the New York Times:

  • Forbidden Paradise, a light drama about an imaginary Eastern European royal court starring the great Pola Negri and directed by the similarly great Ernst Lubitch. I hope Papa got to see this since the accompanying musical program at the Rivoli included “On Volga’s Shores” by Pawlowsky’s Ukranian Ensemble (Papa was from the area now known as Ukraine) and the overture from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony (Tchaikovsky was Papa’s favorite).
  • The Siren of Seville, described by the Times as “the latest bullfighting film” to hit the screen; was there a whole bullfighting genre in the silent era?
  • The Fast Set, directed by William C. De Mille, a well-known director and older brother of the more well-known director Cecil B. DeMille, whose hit The Ten Commandments was still enjoying a long theatrical run
  • K – The Unknown, starring Virginia Vallie, directed by Harry Pollard, and summarily dismissed by Mordaunt Hall, the Times’ movie reviewer.

Other films in town included The Midnight Express, Married Flirts, The Iron Horse, and Madonna of the Streets.

Tuesday Nov 18

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Interesting meeting of
Ball Comittee at Down
Town Zionist Dist.

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Matt’s Notes

Papa went to numerous Zionist balls and banquets throughout the year, so it makes sense for him to have been involved in a planning committee or two, as well. The meeting mentioned in this entry most likely took place at the Downtown Zionist Centre at 52 St. Marks Place, and probably had something to do with the Zionist Organization of America’s lower Manhattan districts. (As we recently discussed, Papa’s Z.O.A. district meetings probably took place at the Downtown Zionist Centre so frequently that he came to refer to Centre as the “District.”) If we look at the sort of work he’s previously done for the Z.O.A., I’d say he joined the ball committee to help with its publicity efforts or secure a prominent guest speaker.

Wednesday Nov 19

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Fitted out my nephew Josale
with his first pair of shoes, how
cute he is.

home & movies

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Matt’s Notes

Interestingly, this is the first time Papa has written a cheerful entry about his nephew, Josale, because it’s the first time circumstances have allowed him to. As you’ll recall, Papa’s sister, Nettie, gave birth to Josale a little over six months ago and just a day before Papa learned of his own father’s death. Papa and his other sister, Clara, decided to keep the bad news from Nettie while she convalesced, though Nettie became suspicious when the family insisted on naming the baby after Papa’s father, Joseph. (Jews normally don’t name their children after the living.) Papa then entered a long period of self-reflective mourning and only wrote about Josale to describe his chronic, worrisome cough, so it’s a relief to see Papa at last write something as unexceptional about him as “how cute he is.” I suppose it was a relief for Papa, too.

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Josele’s birth and Papa’s father’s death were so closely tied that I often wonder if Papa found it hard to be around Josele without really knowing why. Is this happy entry about Josele a sign that Papa has gotten over his grief a bit more?

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Papa’s been going to the movies a lot lately, but he hasn’t said which ones he’s seen. According to the New York Times, there are a couple of new choices in town since he last went a couple of days ago:

  • Married Flirts, a light shipboard comedy based on the novel Mrs. Paramor
  • The Midnight Express, a thriller shown with Charlie Chaplin’s The Pilgrim

Thursday Nov 20

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home

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In my dream I lose count of my fingers and I am sure I’ve lost one. I look down at the ground and I tilt forward and my feet rise into the air and I float head first through the crowd on the sidewalk. My hair is long and reaches to the ground, I can make it move as it sweeps along. I cannot make a rope of it, I can only make the end curl and turn and dance, my hair cannot feel the pavement as a frozen fingertip cannot feel a key.

“Your pal Esther will help” says the strange woman. She stands in front of me and her face is gray and beautiful, I can only see her if I look from the corner of my eye, if I look at her she turns, her face becomes jagged. I have not met her but I know her voice, high and fast, the night voice of the lady downstairs.

I must tell her I have no friend named Esther but I see now the ground is covered in coins. I try to put my feet on the ground so I can pick them up but I float still, I try to grab the coins with my hair but I can only touch them lightly and the coins do not move. “Perhaps your pal can help you grow coins” says the lady downstairs and I know she is right and I also know she does not know how.

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