munger

Wednesday Mar 12

by


Attended massmeeting
at the Hotel Astor marking
the opening of the 1924
$1,500,000 Keren Haysod
drive in NYC

Gladly I listened to the
speeches of the baalei teshuva
Dr. Silverman (Rabbi) and
Mr. David A. Brown.

All the enstranged Jews
are bound to come back
sooner or later.

Light must triumph over darkness.

————–

Matt’s Notes

This entry contains the Hebrew phrase baalei teshuva (the plural form of baal teshuva) which refers to Jews who have strayed from Judaism and returned to the fold.

In this case, Papa adapted the phrase to describe Jews who rejected Zionism and later came to accept it, specifically Rabbi Silverman and David Brown. Silverman was the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanu-El, an influential Reform (or progressive) synagogue in New York, and for many years he had spoken out against Zionism. As reported in the Times, he returned from a trip to Palestine with a different point of view, and his speech at the Astor marked his commitment to “devote the remainder of his life to the cause of Palestine.”

As Papa crowded in with the other 1,000 attendees at the ball, he would have smiled to hear Silverman say:

Any Jew who willfully hinders the movement to rebuild the Jewish homeland is injuring his people and his faith. Any Jew who remains aloof from the movement at this critical period in our history lays himself open to the charge of indifference to the fate of a large part of Israel.

Papa has indicated his disapproval of non-Zionist Jews before (I’d almost say he held them in contempt, but I’m not sure he was capable of such feelings) but he has also indicated his willingness to rejoice in their “repentance.” My mother says he “never held a grudge in his life,” and after reading this entry I wonder if his capacity to forgive, to expect, in fact, people to turn themselves around, had spiritual roots in the concept of baal teshuva.

(Thanks to my wife, Stephanie, for the Hebrew lesson.)

———————-

My father, Sy Unger, died eleven years ago today. Here he is, around 1960, seated between Papa and my mother. How would Papa have told me to remember him?

Thursday Mar 13

by


Attend Maccabean camp
meeting.

———————-

Matt’s Notes

Earlier in the year, Papa co-founded a new chapter of the fraternal Order Sons of Zion (B’nai Zion) and persuaded his fellow members to nickname it the “Maccabean” camp. As previously noted, the Maccabees were legendary Jewish warriors, so the nickname carried with it a certain combative edge, a deliberate challenge to the caricature of Jews as physically inept and resigned to bad luck.

Papa may have had another inspiration for his camp’s nickname, too: “The Maccabean” was the flagship publication of B’nai Zion’s parent organization, the Federation of American Zionists (FAZ). My research here is a little muddy, but it looks like the FAZ became the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) around 1917. In any event, the FAZ/ZOA spun off B’nai Zion in 1908, partly to provide health insurance to its members but also to “help the Zionist Congress in the work of obtaining for the Jewish people a legally secured, publicly assured national home in Palestine.”1

I’m sure Papa had a lot to report at his Maccabean meeting that day, because the night before he’d attended a major event at the Hotel Astor (pictured below) at which a prominent rabbi declared his support for Zionism after years of ambivalence. Papa had felt discouraged in the course of his activist work over the winter, but with the weather warming up and his beloved cause making strides, his spirits must have brightened considerably.

—————-

Additional Notes

I didn’t say much about the Hotel Astor yesterday, but here’s what I know: It was a 500-bedroom, 300-bathroom beauty that rose ten stories above Broadway on the block between 44th Street and and 45th street.

hotel astor

The wall between its two ballrooms could be moved to accommodate large functions like the one Papa attended, though when it first opened in 1907 1904 the Times got most excited about its thermostats:

In each [room] there is a “temperature regulator.” The ordinary method of turning the radiator valves is supplanted by an automatic device enabling the guest to set a pointer upon a clocklike figured scale at a degree of temperature desired.

The building came down, temperature regulators and all, in 1967 to make room for the office tower known as 1515 Broadway, where Viacom now resides. Nyc-architecture.com mourns its passing with a typical, and justified, howl of agony.

(Image source: Library of Congress call number HABS NY,31-NEYO,72-.)

————–

My mother adds:

Lots of people, including yours truly. would meet their dates at the Astor (under the clock). I think this is mentioned in Salinger or is it Fitzgerald—and I’m sure many other books. I’m amazed that Papa allowed his priceless
treasure to go “into the city” to meet rapacious young men, but I did nonetheless. Relationships were more proper in those days and my dates always took me home.

———-

1 – Quoted from B’nai Zion’s 75th anniversary historic review pamphlet.

Friday Mar 14

by


Visited sisters and friend
Mike Weinreich there
spending all evening

Am greatly worried,
For 2 weeks I haven’t
received word from my
parents

————————

Matt’s Notes

Papa was probably used to going a week or two without word from his parents in faraway Sniatyn, but his father had suffered a dangerous fall three weeks earlier. At last report he was still ill, perhaps even bedridden.

No matter how busy Papa kept himself, the intervening weeks must have been increasingly difficult (I speculated yesterday on whether his spirits were starting to brighten, but hidden anxiety would have undercut even his best days). I wonder if Papa’s heart jumped when he found a note slipped under his door, or if his pace was quick and urgent as he walked to his sisters’ apartments. What if Clara opened the door in tears, or Nettie, clutching a letter from the other side, was unable even to speak? He must have composed himself before he knocked on their doors — brushed off his coat, straightened his hat — knowing he needed to be steady for their sakes.

Did his friend, Mike Weinreich, detect his growing anxiety? Did Papa lose himself in reveries all evening, seem uncharacteristically quiet? Or did the solemn, intense gaze he inherited his father, the air of serenity and composure, prevent anyone from knowing how he felt?

And after he got home, after he wrote in his diary, how long did he stare at the one photo he had of his parents? Did he wonder what they looked like now?

Saturday Mar 15

by

Sent home to parents $5.00
& to Solomon & Priskas 2.50 each

Met Beite & her new husband
at Breindel’s and spent the
remainder of the evening at
Brother Rothblums house in E.N.Y.
making new aquaintances
especially that of a [pretty] girl who is
unusually gifted with knowledge

It was indeed not at all a burden
for me to take her home from the
farthest point in Brooklyn to the
farthest point in the Bronx, our
conversation was a varied one
being that of music, arts, business
etc, and she certainly made a
hit with me, she is not of that too naive
kind but shrewed and clever.

I reached home at 5 a.m.

——————

Matt’s Notes

Six weeks earlier, a woman Papa hadn’t seen for eight years approached him on the BMT from Brooklyn to Manhattan and confessed her love for him — fruitlessly so, for she was also engaged to be married. Though fate had denied her to him, he grabbed her for one impossibly melodramatic kiss before they reached their destinations. “If I had only known,” he wrote in his diary that night.

And now, another romantic, cinematic sequence aboard the BMT: Papa offers to escort the young woman to the subway and ride with her into Manhattan. He looks sharp and handsome; she’s happy to accept.

photo of papa in a sharp hat

As they cross the Williamsburg bridge, he tells her how his cousin Breindel, who he had seen in the early part of the evening, met him and his sister Clara when they arrived at Ellis Island in 1913.

At the Canal Street BMT stop, just a few block from his home, he walks her to the Broadway IRT; the train pulls up, and, impulsively, he jumps on board with her. If this were a silent movie, the title card might read:

Cupid's arrow finds its mark

The long ride up through Manhattan begins. Every few stops she assures him he does not have to see her home, but each time he tells her it’s his pleasure, he’s enjoying their talk, it’s getting late and she shouldn’t be alone, he wants to hear what she has to say. She asks him why he calls their mutual friend Rothblum his “brother,” and he explains that they are lodge brothers in the Order Sons of Zion.

He will not budge, so transfixed is he by her face

Finally, the subway emerges from under ground and becomes an elevated train at 161st street. Papa leans in close to point out Yankee Stadium, promises to take her to a game some day.

photo of Yankee Stadium

Only a few stops left now: Mt. Eden, 176th, Burnside, 183rd, Fordham Road, Kingsbridge Road. Finally, with the hour nearing 4:00 AM, she gets out at Mosholu Parkway. Perhaps she declines his offer to walk her to her door, a final treat she’ll save for another time.

photo of IRT map

He relives every moment of their ride on the way back, each stop reminds him of the way she turned her head, laughed, accidentally brushed her hand against his, impressed him with her strong opinions, her command of facts.

lost in his new memories, he nearly misses his stop

When he emerges onto the street, the sky is already a light purple. The streets are mostly empty. It is Sunday. The air is fresh and cool.

and so the world welcomes a new day. But what dawns for him?

————————

Image sources:

Sunday Mar 16

by

It was like a dream. My
last night’s experience, I will
try to have my dream repeated,

Visited Freidas children

Incidentally met the
Sherman sisters at Jeans house
Jean tells me that the Rose
Sh. cares for me which makes
me feel bad as I haven’t any
interest in her. —

I shall wait for the
certain girl and with certain
qualities.

I either I met her
or and I’m hopefull of meeting
her again or I am have yet
to find her.

———————

Matt’s Notes

Looks like Papa was officially smitten with the woman he met the night before, when he shared with her an epic, movie montage of a subway ride “from the farthest point in Brooklyn to the farthest point in the Bronx.” He couldn’t have slept much — he got home at 5:00 AM and I’m sure he was far too dutiful to be a late sleeper — but the first thing he did in the morning was grab his diary and get his excitement on paper. His romantic mind is hard at work, turning his encounter into “a dream,” something more than just a long ride, a memory he cherishes as if he were remembering it twenty years hence as the start of something big.

It’s quite a thing to be single and struggling in New York City. Every conversation is heady with potential, every flirtation could be the turn you took, every subway platform could be the stage for act I. (I went through a little Roosevelt Island Tram phase myself, though Papa’s aphrodisiac seems to have been the BMT.) And the more strange dramas the real world forces on you — your faraway father is ill, like Papa’s was, and you don’t even know what he looks like anymore — the more you believe the unexpected must work the other way, too, that a two-hour subway ride you didn’t see coming has the power to make everything different.

Wait: Papa was a living, breathing, young man, too, not just a nexus of plotlines and motivations; he had almost no choice but to get excited about the woman he’d met. I like this entry because it shows his excitement and immersion in this moment so clearly — the uncharacteristically hurried handwriting, the crossed-out letters, the free associative weighing of what happened to him the previous night. He reveals it in the way he discusses “Rose,” the woman cousin Jean is nudging him toward. She’s not his speed, he’s really sorry, but she just doesn’t have those “certain qualities” he’s looking for. But we know who does, right? Well, let’s not go that far, he tells himself, let’s be objective, “I shall wait for the certain girl,” whoever that might be, but in a flash he’s back to the night before: “I either met her, or am hopefull of meeting her again,” written as if they are two separate options but, of course, refer only to his subway companion.

He checks his tone one last time, cautioning himself that maybe “I have yet to find her,” but he can’t contain his excitement. He wants to have the “dream repeated.” Who could blame him, but who wouldn’t tell him to be careful?

Monday Mar 17

by


Movies & home

My only companion radio
is again entertaining me
this evening.

My heart is full of dreams,
I am longing for a girl to
love me sincerely.

I can’t bear the emptiness
of my life.

H. whom I met Saturday
is a girl that appeals to me
most. I’m planning inviting
her to the opera —

But have I the right as a
wage earner to propose to
a girl like her?

I’m happy in the thought
that she is my friend now
being having been introduced to me by
my friend Rothblum.

———————

Matt’s Notes

“Perhaps in the pursuit of action yesterday’s dream will be forgotten before the day is over…”

Papa wrote those words a few weeks earlier after staying out all night with friends and acquaintances from the old country. How well he knew himself, or at least enough to dread his own swings from dreaminess to disappointment.

And here it is again: Just day ago, lost in fantasies, Papa dared to think he’d met the woman who would change his world. Now he corrects himself abruptly, angrily, declares himself unworthy of her, prepares himself to settle for mere friendship. A day in the factory, an evening alone, a night with his humble possessions — radio, chair, photo of his faraway parents — have shamed him, dissolved his illusions.

To see this reminds me of why Papa’s diary feels so important to me. His beautiful, spare prose speaks richly of his struggle to reconcile what he wants with what he has and is worth reading in its own right. But taken in view of his whole life, it testifies to a deeper, more difficult struggle — the struggle for perspective familiar to those of us who swing between extremes of expectation and judgment.

Papa has as little reason to call his life “empty” as he does to think “H” can transform it, yet he is convinced each is true, and the contrast is unbearable to him. Still, we know he rode out the stormy swings of his inner life to become a man who conveyed and imparted a sense of modulation, realism, and calm. I have idealized Papa, but the more I read about him, the more I realize he must have always retained a trace of his internal changeability; perhaps it was, in part, his mastery of it that made him so remarkable. I’m certainly no stranger to the private, stormy swings he writes about. (Is anyone?) It’s good to think they might be worth it.

—————–

Additional Notes:

Movies Papa might have seen that night include:

  • The Thief of Bagdad
  • The Covered Wagon
  • Thy Name is Woman
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (I wonder if he saw this — it would have matched his mood)
  • The Great White Way
  • America
  • The Ten Commandments
  • A Society Scandal
  • Yolanda
  • The Hoosier Schoolmaster
  • The Fighting Coward

The New York Times also published an article that day on the potential of the “phonofilm,” or sound movie. Author Lee De Forest takes on those who doubt its prospects and makes a strong case for the use of sound movies in news reporting and political coverage. While he’s not sure how it might help dramatic films, he seems most excited about the potential use of music. It’s worth reading here.

Tuesday Mar 18

by


Spent the night with
Rothblum first motoring around
with him and Mrs. Rothblum
in their car, and discussing
the possibility of my further
aquaintance with Miss. H.

After taking Mrs. Rothblum
to her sisters apt. we spent the
night at 2nd Ave Baths

I have resolved to call H.
the 20th Century girl because
in my opinion she mentally
stands above other women
her gayety, full of pep, and I’m
even told that she is smoking
cigarettes (to which I don’t object)
just the perfect 20th Century girl

—————–

Matt’s Notes

The roller coaster ride called “The 2oth Century Girl” continues. On day one, Papa is sure he’s met the girl of his dreams; on day two, seized by pessimism, he literally says “I’m not worthy” and reprimands himself for his folly; on day three, in a scene that could be from a Jewish version of The Great Gatsby, we find him back in the game, “motoring around” and taking a steam bath with the friends who’ll help him plot his next move.

He’s rebounded quite energetically from the previous day’s funk, and in the process has given us another great look at the texture of life in his New York. When he says he motored around in a car, he likely means something like a Model T Ford or a Chevy touring sedan:

My friend Sixto, the highest car authority I know, says there were “hundreds of thousands” of these cars on the road by the 1920’s, and even wage earners like Papa’s friends could have picked one up for very little money. (There were also “a lot of car builders in Manhattan and Brooklyn,” but odds are Rothblum owned a Model T, especially since Henry Ford’s antisemitism wasn’t so well-known yet and wouldn’t have dissuaded a Jewish activist from buying his products.) Sixto also says:

The model T was incredibly sturdy as it was
built to run on crappy rural roads (many, if not most,
unpaved) and share the road with horses on cobble
stoned streets…

The driver of that car drove the car with a huge
steering wheel, and he most likely worked the fuel
from a lever on the steering wheel, while shifting AND
adjusting the timing of the ignition as required
(another lever on the steering wheel). THAT was real
driving.

I don’t have any pictures of Papa driving, but I do have this studio photo of him posing in a prop car with a “huge steering wheel”:

I can picture Papa discussing the “20th Century girl’s” non-objectionable tobacco habit at the Second Avenue Baths, obviously one of the many “schvitzes,” or Russian bath houses, that used to be common in New York. (“Schvitz” literally means “sweat” in Yiddish, and it can be used either as a verb, as in “I’m schvitzing from the heat already,” as a noun to refer to a bath house itself, as in “get me to the schvitz on time” or as a reference to the act of taking a steam bath, as in “I can’t think straight without a schvitz“.)

The only schvitz I’ve even been to is the Tenth Street Baths between First Avenue and Avenue A, and as far as I can tell the overall experience hasn’t changed in a thousand years (except for some coed schvitzing on select nights). The intrepid schvitzer can choose from a Turkish-style steam room, which doesn’t seem very popular, or a dry heat room, which is always full of betoweled men sitting on stone risers that appear to have been carved by ancient peoples from the very bedrock of Manhattan. For a couple of dollars extra, a large person will rub mineral-infused, soapy water on you with a leafy tree branch, and your friends will question your manhood if you don’t take a couple of dips in the icy pool right outside the sauna. This is apparently good for your circulation, which is important if you’re going to avail yourself of the steak-heavy menu in the restaurant upstairs. I usually only take a schvitz before a major milestone, as I did before my wedding, but in Papa’s day it was a much more casual diversion, and certainly an appropriate environment in which to discuss dating strategies.

Update 4/7:

Reader Dina points out the existence of an 1895 comic operetta by Ludwig Englander called “The 20th Century Girl.” Here are the details according to a site called musicaltheaterguide.com:

The 20th Century Girl; comic opera; 3 acts; libretto by Sydney Rosenfeld; Bijou Theatre, New York; 25 January 1895; revised and reopened 6 May 1895 (total 43 perfs)

And here’s a New York Times humor piece from 1912 that uses the same expression (subscription required). Looks like it was, not surprisingly, a common expression.

—————-

Image credits

Library of Congress reproduction number LC-USZ62-63968. No known restrictions on publication.

Library of Congress reproduction number LC-DIG-npcc-02566. No known restrictions on publication.