munger

Tuesday Jan 22

by

Light

A Poem by
Francis William Bourdillon
———————–
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
with the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.

—————-

Matt’s Notes

Papa has clearly not shaken the wistful, reflective mood triggered by his Hebrew birthday and the arrival of his niece’s wedding photo on the previous day. You need only read this poem a couple of times to understand his mood.

————

Call for research help

It’s about to get harder for me to spend as much time as I’d like on research for this project. That’s why I’m asking you, my legions of readers — and make no mistake, your numbers are so vast that to keep count takes almost all of my fingers — for help.

I’ve posted a page on this site called “Cry For Help” with a list of the many people, places, organizations, musical references, events and details of New York life that appear in Papa’s diary. If you know about or are interested in any of these subjects, please write to me at papasdiary ‘at’ gmail.com or post comments about them. If you’d really like to dig in to a subject that might require ongoing research or collaboration, let me know and I’ll set up a collaborative document for us to work on.

I’ve added the list of subjects below, but it’ll always be available on the “Cry For Help” page of this site.

Note: If you want to delve into anything under a “some information already collected” heading, please let me know and I’ll share with you what I’ve got.

——————————–

Organizations:

Total mysteries:

  • David Wolpohn Club
  • Downtown Zionist Club
  • Holland Belgium Club
  • Jewish Students Club
  • Judea Insurance Company
  • Kessler Zion Club
  • Kinereth Camp (probably a B’nai Zion camp in Borough Park)

Some information already collected:

  • B’nai Zion (a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion)
  • Bar Kochba camp of B’nai Zion
  • Hebrew Free Loan Society
  • Keren Hayesod
  • Montefiore Home (later hospital)
  • Tikwaith Yehuda club
  • Zionist Organization of America
  • Information or artifacts and photos relating to Jewish fraternal organizations in general

People (many names are incomplete in the diary, but most of these people would be affiliated with B’nai Zion, Keren Hayesod or the Zionist Organization of America):

Total mysteries:

  • “Rabbi Cook”
  • “Mr. Graf”
  • Rabbi David Horowitz
  • Leibel Krebs (described as “a legendary figure from the old country”)
  • “Dr. Schecter”
  • “Dr. Thon”
  • And a ZOA organizer mysteriously named “Blitz”

Some information already collected:

  • Joseph Bluestone
  • David Blaustien
  • Abraham Goldberg
  • Arthur Ruppin
  • “Judge Strahl”
  • Maurice Samuel
  • “Mr. Zeldin”

President Calvin Coolidge

  • Relationships with Zionism and labor
  • February 12 speech on radio
  • February 22 speech on radio
  • Radio announcement of reelection on November 4

Places

Total mysteries:

  • Boisy (?) Hotel
  • Café Royal
  • Malick’s Restaurant
  • Regina Mansion
  • Snyatyn Synagogue
  • Spring Valley, New York — Jewish summer colonies or other Jewish presence

Some information already collected:

  • Pennsylvania Hotel

Movies and Movie Theaters

Total mysteries:

  • Academy of Music
  • “Song of Love”
  • “White Sister”
  • Lists of releases playing in New York for each month of 1924

Some information already collected:

  • Capitol Theatre
  • Clinton Theatre
  • “Woman of Paris”

Sports

Some information already collected:

  • Abe Goldstein (a professional boxer; won a title fight in 1924)
  • 1924 New York Yankees
  • 1924 New York Giants
  • 1924 Brooklyn Robins (a.k.a. “Dodgers”)

Leisure

General and specific information needed:

  • Central Park in the 20’s, esp. scenes of people rowing
  • Coney Island of the 20’s (overall experience, transportation, summer rental lockers)

Music (history, clips, general background, 1924 prevailing opinion, reviews or performances and recordings):

  • “Drigo’s Serendade”
  • Eastern European Folk tunes that would have been played in immigrant-oriented Radio in 1924
  • Gypsy String Orchestra (particularly their radio presence in the 1920’s)
  • “Gypsy Chardash”
  • “Indian Love Lyrics” (?)
  • Kessler’s Theater
  • “Kreuzer Sonata” (at Kessler’s theater on 10/9/24)
  • “Rubenstein’s Romance”
  • “Shubert’s Waltz op 64#2”
  • “Sleeping Beauty
  • “Straus’s Waltz, Artist’s Dream”
  • “Tosca”

Opera (history, clips, general background, 1924 prevailing opinion, reviews or performances and recordings):

  • “Cavalleria rusticana” (March 8th Performance)
  • “Carmen” (December 4th performance at the Met)
  • “Le Roi de Lahore” (March 26th at the Met)
  • L’Cock D’or (heard on radio march 30)
  • L’Oracolo” (heard on radio march 30)
  • Madame Butterfly” (November 22nd performance)
  • “Martha” (December 5th performance)
  • “Mefistofele” (with Chaliapin, November 24 performance)
  • “Pagliacci (March 8th Performance)
  • “Tannhauser” (November 5th at the Met)
  • General History of the Met, the New York Opera scene, and what the Opera experience would have been like for cash-strapped immigrants

Radio events and history:

  • 1924 Democratic convention coverage radio coverage
  • November 4 Election returns coverage
  • November 5 Coolidge reelection announcement
  • 1924 Democratic convention coverage, esp. June 26, June 30, July 8
  • April 14 Daughters of the American Revolution ceremony
  • Radio Station WEAF
  • WNYC history esp. early broadcasts in July and August

Lifestyle:

  • Cars (Photos and information regarding cars available to immigrants in the 1920’s)
  • Writing instruments (Photos of pens and pencils used in the 1920’s)
  • Telephones (usage and technology in 1924, images of private phones in 1920’s)
  • Public transportation (trolley and subway history, maps, fare information, usage in 1920’s)

Wednesday Jan 23

by


Attended the
performance of The Miracle
at the Century Theatre.
It is certainly the most
stupendous production
I’ve ever seen.

———————

Matt’s Notes:

Stupendous, indeed: “The Miracle” was a “spectacular” designed by famed theatrical and industrial designer Normal Bel Geddes, who converted the entire theater into a huge Gothic cathedral replete with stained glass windows, lofty arches and burning incense. The substance of the show did not seem to impress the New York Times reviewer, John Cobbin, who devoted most of his column to descriptions of the production’s sets, logistics and legions of workers.

The Century Theatre, where “The Miracle” played, was located on Central Park West and 63rd Street, and was demolished in 1931 to make room for the Century Apartments building, which should be recognizable to any New Yorker who’s ever been in Central Park. According to Fred, our resident transit expert, Papa probably got there from the Lower East Side by taking the Second Avenue el from Grand Street station to South Ferry, then the Ninth Avenue el to 59th or 66th Street. He could also have taken the Sixth Avenue el to 58th Street or to 53rd and 8th Avenue.

Here are some photos of the Century Theatre in 1909 (when it was known as the New Theatre) though it probably looked the same when Papa went there in 1924:

Those are trolley tracks in the foreground, but Fred says “…those tracks belong to the Eighth Avenue line, and they’re headed for the Polo Grounds. The line was discontinued in 1935, I’m told. Not likely Papa would have used it, because it began on the west side.”

Here’s an interior hall.

And here’s more of the interior. The theater looks pretty ornate to begin with — it must have been quite a sight when Papa saw “The Miracle.”

—————————–

Additional references

If you enjoyed the little snippet of subway information above and crave even more, check out this 1924 IRT map and this 1924 BMT map. For the truly insatiable transit lover, this page of more historical New York transit maps could keep you from sleeping or eating for days.

Image credits: Library of Congress LC-USZ62-55256, LC-USZ62-120460, LC-USZ62-55255. Inquiring into restrictions.

Thursday Jan 24

by


Again meetings

Right from work one
meeting attended at the
Biosy Central Hotel by
the East Side K.H. Executors
and the 2nd meeting
of the Maccabean Camp
at 50 Delancey St,

I notice that our new
camp is gradually
improving.

——————

Papa worked in a garment factory, but he doesn’t write much about it. Perhaps, after so many years of factory work, his routine didn’t surprise him enough to warrant much attention in his diary, or maybe he just considered his Zionist activities to be his “real”work.

In any event, knowing he went right from the factory to a series of meetings gives us another small hint as to what the atmosphere in those meetings was like. I’m not sure yet whether they convened in smoky, crowded social club basements, in private apartments where boxes of Zionist flyers stood in for chairs, or in little rented offices papered with Yiddish posters. Maybe Papa and his compadres pressed around the corner table of a kosher restaurant in a tight ring, craning their necks to see whatever papers or materials their leader spread out before them, urgently pointing and gesturing.

We do know, though, that they were all probably dirty and tired, their clothes and hair and nails carrying with them whatever traces of grease or thread or dust or blood their professions exposed them to. I wonder, too, how many of them were like Papa — clever, articulate people who couldn’t wait to rush from work to these gatherings where their ideas and powers of reason and most serious thoughts, having been suppressed all day, could finally burst forth and collide in the air. Maybe the American Zionist and labor movements benefited, in some way, from the way this pent-up intellectual energy fueled the urgency of meetings like the ones Papa attended.

By the way, for those of you just joining us, “K.H” refers to Keren Hayesod, a Zionist fundraising organization that’s still around today. “The Maccabean Camp” refers to Papa’s chapter of the Order Sons of Zion (a.k.a. B’nai Zion) a charitable fraternal organization I’ve mentioned before. Here are some stats about them from the 1924-1925 American Jewish Year Book:

ORDER SONS OF ZION
Org. Apl. 19, 1908. OFFICE: 44 E. 23rd, New York City
Fourteenth Annual Convention, July 1923, New Haven, Conn.
Camps, 101. Members 7,000.
PURPOSE: Fraternal and Zionistic

And here’s a little more background from the 1917-1918 Jewish Communal Register:

PURPOSE: “Aims to improve the condition of the whole Jewish people at large and to help the Zionist Congress create for the Jewish people a publicly owned, legally secured home in Palestine.”

BENEFITS: Graded insurance against death ranging from $100.00 to $2000.00. Health and accident insurance.

ACTIVITIES: Supports Jewish and Zionist Educational Institutions. Encourages the study of the Hebrew language

An essay in the Register also has some interesting things to say about the importance of fraternal orders like B’nai Zion:

In their present form the Jewish Orders constitute a valuable and important factor in our communal life. The interests of about a million Jews are involved in their existence and welfare. Their influence for good is of inestimable value to our social activities. In his lodge and order, the Jew, who is a member, finds an agency which affords to him and his family a certain measure of protection in the event of death, illness or distress, and at the same time, a ready means to aid and assist others when in similar circumstances.

But:

With all the good features these organizations possess, and the good work they actually do, their existence as a whole, with very few exceptions, is uncertain and insecure.

As mentioned before, the Jewish fraternal system did indeed become far less important to Jewish life as Jews found other means to organize and Americanize. Still, greatly transformed descendants of fraternal organizations — including B’Nai Brith and B’Nai Zion — still carry on.

Friday Jan 25

by

A pleasant evening
home with my family

————-

Matt’s Notes

By “home with my family,” Papa must mean he visited or hung out with his sister Clara or his sister Nettie and her daughter Rosie.

Papa must have been an unequivocally adoring uncle to Rosie. I wonder if she picked up on his vibe, if her early childhood memories of him are as soothing and important as mine. Check out how blissed out I am in this picture of me and him in 1971:

My wife says this is probably as relaxed as I’ve ever looked in my life, which may well be true. Papa was sick here, struggling with a combination of leukemia and Parkinson’s. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t be around for the next summer’s crop of photos, or maybe he still remembered the lonely winter of ’24; whatever the reason, he enjoyed this moment as much as I. A sunny little memory for us both to take along, for however long we had.

Saturday Jan 26

by


In a cold night my helper
refused to distribute the
circulars for the mass meeting
that I am calling. I stood
alone in the terrible weather
distributing them doing it
lovingly knowing the respons-
ibility that rests on my shoulders
when Dr. Bernstein passed
me on his way to lecture for
the Zeire Zion.

He did not feel like speaking
but seeing my sacrifice he
got inspired and delivered
his best, he told me.

Later I joined him at the
Z.Z. So I unconsciously
served some purpose
I saw there a girl
that is good.

——————

Matt’s Notes

It got down to 7° on the night of January 26, 1924 (oddly, we’ve had the same kind of sudden temperature drop on January 26, 2007) so I can understand why Papa’s helper left him in the lurch. Understanding is not forgiving, though, so I hate the old bastard, wherever he is. I think Papa, who had been worried about the prospects for his January 28th meeting for a while, wasn’t in a forgiving mood, either — he notes how he “lovingly” continued to shoulder his responsibilities, contrasting himself rather pointedly with certain would-be helpers who weren’t quite so loving and responsible.

I’m sure Papa didn’t distribute many fliers on that biting, snowy night. Any people on the street must have rushed by, chins tucked to their chests, hardly inclined to stop for the earnest young man who waved papers at them and said something about something coming up on Monday. Such young men were all over the place. Who could tell them apart?

I can’t keep the Zionist varieties straight myself, but I think Zeire-Zion, Dr. Bernstein’s organization, had a Zionist-Socialist agenda. I’m not clear on whether they thought the Jewish state would be a nice little place for socialist experiment or a glorious staging ground for a global socialist victory (the Zionist-Socialist movement was, not surprisingly, factional as well) and I may well have the whole movement entirely wrong, so please correct me if you know better.

As a labor activist himself Papa would have had some affinity for the Zionist-Socialists, but he wouldn’t have stood out in the cold for them. Papa worked for the Zionist Organization of America and its related organizations, which concentrated on organized fundraising for business investment and land purchases in Palestine. The ZOA had its own internal philosophical clashes, but socialism wasn’t in the mix.

Anyway, Papa gave Dr. Bernstein a boost and met a “girl that is good” at the Zeire-Zion meeting, so the night, as they say, wasn’t a total loss.

Sunday Jan 27

by


Busy here and there
jumped in to [both] my sisters
for a moment.

I met again the good
girl at Malicks’s Rest.
and escorted her home

Certainly there are more
good ones but so rare

———

Matt’s Notes

I imagine the “good girl” is the same one Papa met at the Zeire Zion meeting the previous night, though whether he made a date with her or simply ran into her at Malick’s Restaurant is unclear. To escort her home was, I think, a gesture of intimacy for Papa (in a previous entry, he had unkind words for women who left a party with un-“gentlemanlike” men they’d just met) but he hardly seems smitten since barely mentions her before turning to speculation on what other women are out there.

I’m trying to figure out what Malick’s restaurant might have been like and what Papa would have eaten there. According to “New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern” by Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine, Jewish restaurants never got much fancier than the “gourmet delicatessen with formica tables” (an ambivalence toward Diaspora food could be one reason why Lower East Side Jews wandered into nearby Chinatown for culinary solace) so Malick’s was probably a crowded little ground-floor eatery with pickles on its tiny tables and blintzes on its menu. More to come about this, I hope.

————–

Updates

2/6 – My mother adds:

Our family wasn’t very big on eating out very often, mainly, as the article you referred to states, because in our neighborhood, the only kosher restaurants were delis and my grandmother could cook everything better herself, except for pastrami, corned beef, etc, which Papa preferred to bring home. There was one horrible looking Chinese restaurant, which our parents shunned. Reba [my mother’s friend] and I used to eat lunch there and then smoke loose cigarettes. (Bold)!

As far as I know, Papa didn’t enter a Chinese restaurant until I was in my late teens, and then only ate sub gum chow mein (all veggies). My grandmother never would eat Chinese food, since she was convinced they used cats and mice as their staples.
Getting hungry?

Monday Jan 28

by

I’ve tried to make the
mass meeting a success
my efforts brought a big
crowd, the speakers were
brilliant and the Cantor was
wonderful but got only
a handfull of members.
I have worked it all single-
handed, but — I am not
discouraged, I will carry on

After the meeting I
spend a pleasant hour
at Shulem’s in the company
of Ab. Goldberg, Dr. Schechter
and Mr. Graf.

——————

Papa had been worried about the success of this meeting, which was meant to revive a flagging chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, for a while. He’d considered giving up on his efforts if the meeting wasn’t well attended, but I’m sure only the sight of a completely empty room would have punctured his idealism that decisively. (To chase a dream in New York is to deny its folly. So it always was, so it shall ever be.)

Papa passed his “pleasant hour” at Sholem’s with Abraham Goldberg who, as mentioned before, was a prominent member of the Z.O.A. I don’t know who Dr. Schechter and Mr. Graf were (for a brief moment I wondered if Dr. Schechter could have been Solomon Schechter himself, but since Solomon died in 1909 it would have been decidedly unpleasant, not to mention illegal, to spend an hour in his company).

It surprised me to read about the cantor’s presence at Papa’s meeting, but I know I really shouldn’t be. I also know I’m going to be surprised by this kind of thing again and again in the course of this project. I think it’s due to my own lack of spiritual attachment to Judaism (or anything else). While I’m aware of religion’s effects on people’s politics and daily lives, I know no more about what it’s like to be a person guided by spiritualism than I know what it’s like to be a dolphin guided by sonar. Papa was an observant, learned Jew, he saw himself as one of the Children of Israel and, accordingly, saw Zionism as a way home for himself and for everyone he loved. Zionism was an extension of his Judaism, so why wouldn’t he arrange for a cantor to sing at a Zionist meeting? But still…

If I seem to be struggling with something obvious, it’s because I’m so different from Papa in this way. It’s food for thought: Part of the reason I’m doing this project is to comprehend, as an adult, those qualities in Papa that seemed so transcendent to me as a child. But certainly Papa’s spiritual beliefs were greatly responsible for that transcendence, for the warmth he exuded, for keeping him intact throughout the trials of his youth. Whatever I find of him in myself, then, has at least some of its roots in spiritualism. Yet I’ve inherited only the effects, not the cause; spiritualism created what psychology perpetuated. Maybe it’s just another face of assimilation.

Update 1/28

I think there’s a parallel between the process of religious tradition giving way to inherited behavior and the evolution of the Jewish fraternal system, which I’ve talked about in other posts. The fraternal system provided a formal way to let immigrants cement their relationships, through ritual, on American soil with people from their original countries; they could take comfort in their old traditions while starting to build new ones. As the immigrant communities developed more home-grown support systems and found support in their new country’s agencies (labor unions, government services, etc.) the importance of ritual and fraternal bonding lessened. What older generations sought through the fraternal system — security, a sense of responsibility to others, a feeling of mutual support — remained, but in another form. Subsequent generations still pursued the qualitative equivalent of what their forbears taught them to value, only in different ways; what one generation pursued through ritual, another perpetuated through more secular means. Isn’t this a bit like what I was saying above about how my grandfather’s admirable qualities — his diligence, his respectful nature, his generosity — inspired by the spiritual side of Judaism, might make it to subsequent generations in the absence of religious belief?