munger

Tuesday Jan 29

by


Reported to Blitz the result
of the meeting.

On my way home I bumped
into Mr. Novack of Coney Island,
he held me back for more then
an hour, trying to induce me
to join the P.D.C. and
telling me the whole story
(his version) of the Weitzman
Brandeis-Mack break.

I listened to all impatiently as
I was hungry and anxious
to get into some eating place.
However it was interesting
He certainly is an interesting
type, he found the wrong
customer for the P.D.C. I sympathize
with them but physical
and financial ability to join
them also.

————

Again the mysterious “Blitz” materializes. And then, poof, he’s gone.

The P.D.C. is, I think, the Palestinian Land Development Company, another Zionist organization devoted to purchasing land in Palestine. I like how Papa admits to being too hungry to listen to Novack’s speil. Did he shift around from foot to foot, glance down the street as if something caught his eye, remark on how crowded the sidewalk was, or say things like “well, anyway…” hoping that Novack would pick up on his impatience?

Novack probably couldn’t have been distracted if he was talking about the “Weizman Brandeis-Mack break.” (Chaim Weizman and Judge Louis Brandeis, the respective leaders of the European and American Zionist movements, differed on the management of investment in Palestine and fell out over Weizman’s establishment of Keren Hayesod in 1921.) It must have been a subject of passionate debate, so I’m sure the conversation would have lasted more than an hour if Papa hadn’t been so hungry.

Wednesday Jan 30

by

Am happier today with
the $5.00 raise to my salary
which I got today.

Enjoyed immensely the
lecture given by Dr. Arthur
Ruppin at the meeting of
the Zionist Sustaining members
at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
The lecture was of great
educational value to me.

[the rest of this page contains a
continuation of the next day’s entry]

—————

Matt’s Notes

Arthur Ruppin was one of the biggies of the Zionist movement, a promoter and facilitator of land purchases and settlement in Palestine and also a founder of Tel Aviv. The World Zionist Organization Web site discusses the origins of certain Israeli street names, and its explanation of Ruppin Boulevard has a good biography of Ruppin (as do many other Web sites and books) so I won’t talk much about him here other than to say he would have been a major celebrity to Papa. The Ruppin lecture was clearly a W.Z.O. or Z.O.A. benefit for contributors at the Sustaining member level (“sustaining member” is a typical organizational membership term, but I’m not sure what it signified in this case).

The setting was certainly commensurate with Ruppin’s status: The Pennsylvania Hotel, which stood, as it still does, at 32nd Street and 7th Avenue. If you’re familiar with the Pennsylvania, you certainly don’t think of it as an impressive spot; nowadays it’s known more for being the official hotel of the Westminster Dog Show than for being the “The Largest Hotel in the World,” as its brochure accurately claimed when its 2,200 rooms opened in 1919. It was managed in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company by E.M. Statler, who was known for tricking out his hotels with quirky innovations. Besides describing the “ingenious ‘servidor’ device which enables a guest to send out his laundry, or clothes to be pressed, without any contact with servants” the Pennsylvania brochure also brags:

In the Pennsylvania, every bed-room has its private bath-room (with either tub or shower bath); and pure, fresh drinking water (iced) flows in every guest-room upon pressure of a button.

Apparently all in line with the American dream, since “The United States is, as everyone knows, a land of bathtubs and iced drinking water.” I’m not sure Papa thought of America that way, though he was certainly no stranger to cold water — and only cold water — running from his tenement taps and into the toilet he shared with everyone else on his floor. But anyway:

The convenient location of the Pennsylvania is one of its most-appreciated features. The finest of New York’s shops are just nearby, the theatre district is immediately to the north, and the business and financial sections (“down-town”) are within easy reach by the “subway” (underground electric railway), which has a station in the hotel. Bus lines and surface cars (electric) pass the door, and an elevated railway is but a block away. Landing-stages of the steamer-lines are nearby.

I quote this not because it’s fun to read, though it is, but because it gives us another look at Papa’s New York. Think about it: only five years prior to the Ruppin lecture, tourist brochures still felt the need to define “subway” and “down-town” and point out that one could lead to the other. In fact, the West 30’s hadn’t been well served by underground electric rail for long, so on his way to the lecture Papa was probably giddy over all the ways he could get there. If I were him, I would have taken the BMT from from Essex to Canal and switched to an uptown train to Penn Station. Then again, he might have gone out of his way to take the IRT just for novelty’s sake — memories of the days before 1918, when it finally started running from Chambers Street to Times Square, were probably still fresh in his mind.

Regardless of which train he took, Papa would have emerged into a landscape dominated by the old Penn Station, an architectural marvel that was demolished in 1964 to make room for Madison Square Garden. (nyc-architecture.com has an appropriately disgusted write-up on this heartbreaking travesty).

Papa probably headed to one of the Pennsylvania’s ornate second-floor banquet rooms or ballrooms for his meeting. I haven’t yet learned what Ruppin lectured about; in 1924 he was still a proponent of bi-nationalism in Palestine (as he would be until violent riots in 1929 changed his mind) so perhaps he had something to say about that, or maybe he presented new ideas about land development and settlement.

All in all, between his $5.00 raise and a stimulating lecture, a good day for Papa.

——————

Additional notes:

  • While the Pennsylvania Hotel was still under construction, a dynamo inside caught fire, resulting in a huge explosion that damaged a number of neighboring buildings and caused a few women to faint, though according the the Times they “were revived in nearby drug stores.” The whole article, entitled “Explosions Rock Big New Hotel” is in the April 9, 1918 edition of The New York Times (subscription required).
  • “Times Sq. Grows As Subway Centre“, The New York Times, July 1, 1918
  • “World’s Biggest Hotel Opens Today”, The New York Times, January 25th, 1919
  • Wikipedia’s Penn Station entry
  • The New York Observer had an article by Chris Shott in its August, 2006 issue about the sorry state of the Pennsylvania Hotel. The Observer makes it way too hard to link to articles in their archive, so I won’t bother, but I did learn one fun fact from it: “the phone number immortalized by Glenn Miller, Pennsylvania 65000, still rings at the front desk.”

————-

Image credits: Penn Station circa 1920, Library of Congress # LC-USZ62-74598

Thursday Jan 31

by


A longing to see Miss Weisman
brought me to her home at
Pulaski Bklyn. I enjoyed
seeing her again after a lapse
of nearly 2 years took a long
walk with her conversing about
days gone by. I invited her
to join me at the banquet of
the Camp this Sat.

On my way home in the Trolley
Tillie that once worked with
me about 8 years ago in a
neckwear [shop], came over to me
while telling me that she was
engaged she also told of a
great love she felt for me until
she met her present fiance,
She said she would live on
bread and water and in a
small room just to be with me

[continues on unused portion of previous page]

but she never dared to tell me

She is still pretty and in a
moment of excitement I could
not help taking her in my
arms and kissing her, that
was on the Plaza, it looked to me
inviting. (This was the first and last kiss for her)
This is really the first time a
woman ever told of her great love
for me. If I had only known.

————

Matt’s Notes

One more time:

A longing to see Miss Weisman brought me to her home at Pulaski, Brooklyn. I enjoyed seeing her again after a lapse of nearly 2 years. Took a long walk with her, conversing about
days gone by. I invited her to join me at the banquet of the Camp this Saturday.

On my way home in the trolley, Tillie, that once worked with me about 8 years ago in a neckwear shop, came over to me while telling me that she was engaged. She also told of a great love she felt for me until she met her present fiance. She said she would live on bread and water and in a small room just to be with me, but she never dared to tell me.

She is still pretty, and in a moment of excitement I could not help taking her in my arms and kissing her. That was on the Plaza. It looked to me inviting. (This was the first and last kiss for her.) This is really the first time a woman ever told of her great love for me.

If I had only known.

—————–

New York can pull these pranks like no other city. Papa’s already wistful over his visit with an old girlfriend, wondering what went wrong, wondering if he’d ever find someone. That would be hard enough work for anyone. Certainly the last thing he now needs is for a woman who he hasn’t seen in eight years to confess her secret love for him and at the same time tell him there’s nothing to be done about it since she’s engaged. All this on a trolley car headed for Manhattan — a few more moments and they’ll be back to their irrevocably separate lives. So, a kiss, and for one heady moment they hide from everything they’ve missed and from everything they ever will miss.

Why did he kiss her? Had he loved her too? Or was she just a substitute for Miss Weisman? How many times did he think back on that kiss in later years? Did she carry it with her, too, turning to it again and again, retreating to the memory when life’s compromises overwhelmed her?

It all feels like something out of a (silent) movie, as these moments often do, especially in New York where they happen in public, among people, in front of soaring backdrops. And here’s Papa, looking the part:

The view (presumably from Cadman Plaza) might have looked something like this:

At least his story has a happy ending. Papa, this is you:

—————–

Image Credit: New York from Williamsburg Bridge, 1920. Library of Congress # LC-D4-73392

Friday Feb 1

by


Evening at Loew’s Delancy
Saw Chaplin’s serious
movie production
A Woman of Paris

– Fine work. –

———–

Matt’s Notes

My special friend Netflix recently afforded me the opportunity to see A Woman of Paris, and while I was excited just to watch something that Papa saw, I think it’s a fine movie on its own merits. It’s also an unusual work for Chaplin because, as Papa points out, it’s a “serious movie production” and, as its opening title card cautions, Chaplin doesn’t appear in it.

I don’t see a lot of silent films, so when I do I’m often surprised by their technical sophistication. Early talkies could be stagy and static because primitive microphones forced actors and cameras to stay in place, but it’s easy to mistake those limitations as endemic to 20’s films in general. In fact, silent directors were not so restricted, and Chaplin displays a masterly command of pacing, editing, composition and camera movement. Chaplin directed the films he starred in, too, but as Vincent Canby noted when A Woman of Paris was revived in 1978, Chaplin’s directorial talent is “so closely bound to the performer’s personality we can’t easily tell where one starts and the other leaves off.” If you’re a movie fan, A Woman of Paris is worth checking out just to evaluate Chaplin’s behind-the-camera talent without distraction.

The story concerns a young provincial woman named Marie St. Claire (Edna Purviance, a Chaplin regular) who heads off to Paris when her plans to elope with Jean, her earnest young beau (Carl Miller) go awry. Within a year she’s living in high style, kept by the unapologetically lascivious playboy Pierre Revel (Adolphe Menjou, who really stands out). Jean resurfaces in Paris, and a moral crisis ensues for Marie.

I have to remind myself, when I see better silent films, that their broad performances and dramatic scores do not mean the films inherently lack nuance, and A Woman of Paris is a great example. Though he’s a cad, Pierre is not unsympathetic, and he’s far more honest with Marie than Jean, who claims to want her back but is unable to really pursue her for fear of offending his mother. Marie may be a kept woman, but Chaplin does not judge her too harshly, and resists the urge to force her into a climactic rejection of her comfortable life (as I’ve been conditioned to expect from major Hollywood releases). Jean is just too wishy-washy to merit such a change. While everything ends in a rush with Jean’s sudden death and Marie leaving Paris to work in a provincial orphanage, the resolution is not as corny as it sounds. As Canby notes, the film is “a highly moral tale that teaches that the wages of naivete is death, while the wages of sin may well be a better understanding of the true values of living.”

The film was apparently critical darling (the New York Times called Chaplin a “director par excellence…a bold, resourceful, imaginative, ingenious, careful, studious and daring artist”) but disappointed the public, who didn’t want to see a Chaplin movie without Chaplin. My wife, Stephanie, finds it consistent that Papa liked an ambiguous, commercially unpopular movie because I generally prefer difficult, ambiguous, or depressing movies over popular ones, as do my mother and my sister. It’s not quite clear what Papa, who prided himself on being a gentleman, would have liked about a story in which gentle behavior is a dubious virtue, but maybe he just liked interesting art for its own sake. Or, perhaps, the film’s final title card cemented his approval:

It was right in line with what he believed (and after the previous day’s romantic roller-coaster, something he probably needed to tell himself). Perhaps he nodded quietly to himself as he read it.

—————

Additional Notes:

According to Cinematreasures.org, The Loews Delancey Theatre was located at 140-146 Delancey street, next to Ratner’s (the legendary dairy restaurant that tragically closed a few years ago). It’s amazing to think that there were once at least two independent movie houses on the Lower East Side within a few blocks of each other (the Clinton and the Delancey) when so few independent theaters survive in New York today. Anyway, there’s a great thread about the Delancey at Cinematreasures, so head over there if you want to learn more.

————————

References:

Saturday Feb 2

by


Enjoyed Installation Banquet
of Maccabean Camp at
Greenberg’s Roumanian
Casino, and in company
of Miss Weisman.

Sent home today $5.00

—————–

Matt’s Notes

This must have been quite a night for Papa. Not only was he installed as an officer of a B’nai Zion chapter he helped found, he did it in front of Miss Weisman, a woman who seemed to be an object of long-smoldering affection.

I wonder if the “longing to see Miss Weisman” after a “two-year lapse” he spoke of two days earlier (when she was a supporting player in the most dramatic and bittersweet episode of Papa’s year) was in part triggered by the approaching installation banquet. Perhaps the prospect of attending such an event without a companion attenuated his sense of loneliness and made him need to see someone important to him, or perhaps, in inviting “Miss Weisman” to see him celebrated and honored, he sought some kind of denouement to their romantic relationship.

Either way (if I’m right) I don’t think he knew why the urge to see her struck two days before the banquet; it just welled up and, as a romanticist, he saw any resulting satisfaction or poignancy as part of life’s natural theatrical sweep.

———————–

Additional Notes

I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of rituals, speeches and food the Maccabean installation banquet would have featured, but I don’t have much information yet. Since it took place in Greenberg’s Roumanian Casino, about which I have no information, my mind turns naturally to Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse as a point of reference. Thus, I think the banquet must have been a crowded, noisy affair, with schmaltz on the plates and schmaltz in the air, as it were. Then again, B’nai Zion’s mission was serious and important to its members, so maybe the night had both sober and boisterous moments.

I did find one Jewish banquet menu from the 1920’s at the New York Historical Society, but it’s for the Temple Beth El Golden Jubilee Banquet and Ball, which, as a major celebration for a well-endowed Reform (i.e. liberal) synagogue, would have been very unlike Papa’s event. The menu certainly doesn’t reflect what Papa would have eaten at his own grassroots organization’s banquet (for one, it appears to contain both dairy and meat dishes, which would not have been kosher, both literally and figuratively, for Papa).

Anyway, since I have the information I’ll stick it up here for your enjoyment:

Temple Beth El Golden Jubilee Banquet and Ball at Hotel Biltmore

February 16, 1924

Fruit Cocktail

Cream of fresh Mushrooms a L’infanta

Celery – Salted Almonds – Olives

Cassolette of Sea Food Thermidor

Barised Sweetbread Montglas

String Beans au gratin – Potatoes Louisette

Royal Squab on Toast

Salad Palm Beach

Bombe Praline Fraisette – Cakes

Demi Tasse

Note that Temple Beth El that later consolidated with Temple Emanu-El, which occupies a much-admired building on East 65th Street.

Sunday Feb 3

by


One man in whom I
so much believed the
proponent of the League of
Nations is dead.
Woodrow Wilson

I have certainly so much
to write in my diary but
I am prevented from doing
so because of inconvenience,
This week I am removing to
my own lone humble little
home where I will have the
opportunity to make my
entries regularly.

———————-

Wilson was in office when Papa first arrived in New York, and I’m sure the headlines about his administration made Papa feel good about his adopted country — Wilson was a trust-buster, a friend of labor, a proponent of suffrage, and believed in aggressively promoting democracy around the world. If I were a psychologist, I might even say that Papa, displaced, longing for home and politically liberal himself, would have found a sort of father figure in Wilson and grown especially attached to him. (Wilson’s support of the Balfour declaration and of Zionism in general was real, but muted; I’m sure Papa would rathe have described him as “an enthusiastic Zionist” than a “proponent of The League of Nations.”) In any event, having lived through the less progressive Harding and early Coolidge years, Papa probably took Wilson’s death especially hard.

Monday Feb 4

by


A verse by Heinrich Heine

Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen,
Die hat einen andern erwahlt;
Der andre leibt eine andre
Und hat sich mit dieser vermählt.

Das Mädchen heiratet aus Ärger
Den ersten besten Mann,
Der ihr in den Web gelaufen;
Der Jüngling ist übel dran.

Es ist eine alte Geschichte,
Doch bleibt sie immer neu;
Und wem sie just passieret,
Dem bricth das Herz entzwei.

———————-

Matt’s Notes:

This is Heinrich Heine’s poem “Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen (A Young Man Loves a Maiden).” Here’s one translation I found:

A young man loves a maiden
But another she prefers,
The other one loves another,
And ties the knot with her.

From spite, the maiden marries
The first who comes along,
And happens `cross her path;
The youth must rue it long.

It is an old, old story,
Yet still forever new;
And every time it happens,
It breaks the heart in two.

Though he’s been busy the last couple of days, Papa is still clearly affected by the events of January 31, when, after a wistful visit to an old flame, another woman he hadn’t seen for eight years approached him on the trolley and confessed her undying love for him even though she was engaged to be married. Is the poem Papa quotes here — a woman marries a man she doesn’t love because the one she loves doesn’t love her — a reference to his breakup with the old girlfriend, the encounter with the woman on the trolley, or a little of both?

Heinrich Heine lived in exile for many years and wrote passionately about heartache and loneliness, so I see why Papa, displaced and heartsick himself, might have reached for his Heine poems at this time. Did Papa, frustrated by the lack of privacy he wrote about the day before, pore over his poetry books in secret after everyone else in his apartment had gone to bed, hoping to find the words to express what he didn’t have time to write himself? Or maybe, since Heine was a Giant of German letters, Papa might have known Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen by heart (especially since it was put to music in one of Schumann’s more famous song cycles, Dichterliebe) and he was going through it in his head before he sat down to write.

In any event, if you read through the Dicheterliebe verses and other Heine poems (I’ve listened to the Schumann songs, too, which strike me as oddly chipper considering their turgid lyrics) you can see why they appealed to Papa’s Romantic soul.

—————–

Additional notes:

One other thing I find interesting about this entry is the contrast between Papa’s English and German handwriting. Check out the difference at the top of his entry:

At first I thought his German penmanship, though quite nice, seemed less clear to me because I don’t speak German, but even my German-speaking friends have trouble with it. I think he probably wrote more deliberately in English because it wasn’t his native language, while his German writing flowed more quickly and therefore looks more slashing and spidery.

(Special thanks to the folks at Fleisher’s Grass Fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, N.Y. for helping me with the German in this post.)

———–

Update 4/9

See the April 9, 2007 post for another mention of “A Young Man Loves a Maiden”

——————-

Additional References:

Heinrich Heine’s biography at Wikipedia

Collected Heine poems at Henrich-Heine.net

Dichterliebe at Amazon.com