coney island

Friday July 11

by


C.I.

Attended funeral this
morning of Prof. I.S. Hurwich
and for the first time have
I seen how dead human
bodies are being cremated.

The gruelling process of
cremation is certainly
touching.

——————-

Matt’s Notes

I must say I’m a bit baffled by this entry. I think Papa says he went to the funeral of a Professor named “I.S. Hurwich,” though his handwriting bunches up a little and makes it hard to tell:

I haven’t yet learned who Professor Hurwich was or how Papa know him, though I’m more intrigued by the circumstances under which Papa watched the good Professor’s cremation. Did the funeral take place while Papa was out on Coney Island? Hurwich was no Viking — he was more likely a Zionist leader or, perhaps, a luminary of Yiddish-language criticism — so I don’t think he was set afire and launched out past the breakers. I suppose a public crematorium could have been one of Luna Park’s sideshow attractions — there was, after all, an “Incubator Baby” hospital right on the Boardwalk — but I don’t think Papa would have paid to see such a thing.

So, the question remains: Who was Professor Hurwich, and in what kind of facility did his cremation take place? Also, were open cremations an established tradition in the 1920’s? And what does Papa mean when he says the cremation process was “touching?” I usually think “touching” describes the invocation of gentle or wistful emotions, but maybe Papa, who also found the affair “grueling,” used it as a polite way to say “grotesque” or “frightening.” In any event, gentle reader, please send an e-mail or drop a comment if you have any ideas.

Saturday July 12

by


Coney Island again
until a late hour

———————

Matt’s Notes

With a lot of time to kill and little money to spend during his factory’s slack season, Papa has become a Coney Island regular over the summer (especially during the last week of 80-plus degree weather, when he visited five times).

As previously indicated, Papa liked to get there via the ferry that ran from the Battery in Manhattan (a good walk or short ride on the elevated train from his apartment on Attorney Street) to Seagate, where he and his friends had rented a locker for the season. (Alas, the Battery-Seagate ferry no longer runs, and had in fact been falling out of favor since the advent of subway service to Coney).

I’m trying to learn more about what he might have done there every day, but in the meantime we can at least be sure that his swimsuit was a full-body ensemble, to wit:

Wednesday July 16

by


Had just a little outing
tonight with friends in C.I.

————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa and his friends probably didn’t go swimming on this casual evening excursion to Coney Island. They probably hopped on the ferry or a series of subways from Essex Street to the Brighton Beach line (temperatures were in the high 80’s during the day, so I bet they took the ferry to cool off) hit the Boardwalk, and spent the rest of the evening strolling, chatting, and perhaps noticing women, like these fellows on the left:

———————-

Audio Source: “Coming Home From Coney Isle,” a 1906 recording by Jones and Spencer via archive.org.

Sunday July 20

by

Bathing in C.I. with
my friends.

—

I wonder how some
people can enjoy real
happiness, no matter
how rich they are, if they
do not devote a part of
their lives to help other
human beings.

All humans are alike
and when death calls them
forth poor and rich alike
and they have to stand the
same suffering of death

Also I cannot conceive the
idea of some people being real
happy without a having a sense of under-
standing for classical music
which appeals to the very soul,
and other arts.

——————–

Matt’s Notes

I’m trying to imagine why Papa’s trip to Coney Island or what other recent events triggered this meditation on the nature of happiness. Certainly yesterday’s celebration of the new Torah at the Sniatyner Synagogue reminded Papa of his father, a religious teacher who schooled his students in the sacred, spiritual joys of altruism. Papa had also, on more than one occasion, looked upon large groups of happy people — in the movies, on the streets, during previous visits to Coney Island — and found himself wondering what, exactly, they were so pleased about.

Perhaps this day’s record crowd of 600,000 Sunday celebrants at Coney, so many of them smiling and laughing and frivolously splashing about, boggled Papa’s mind or clashed with the serious thoughts running through it from the previous day. Even his friends (and here I’m thinking of the rakish Rothblum) might have demonstrated too little seriousness and disturbed Papa’s mood. I wonder, too, if Papa was additionally frustrated with himself for not just relaxing and enjoying his day at the beach, making him feel even more self-absorbed detached.1

Regardless of what triggered it, I sort of like the strident, idealistic tone of this entry. It’s almost like the protestation of an undergraduate activist (“Dude, how can you sit there and eat cotton candy when people out there need help?”) especially since it switches subjects so suddenly from Death, the great equalizer, to a complaint about peoples’ taste in music (“Dude, if you don’t like this record you just don’t get it.”)

I don’t mean to say Papa’s feelings weren’t genuine, though. He maintained his devotion to idealistic pursuits — Zionism, the labor movement — long after most youthful enthusiasts put aside such things. He would, in fact, retire as a shop steward after a lifetime of union activism. I’m sure being a union rep in the garment industry wasn’t a storybook job, but I expect, whatever it entailed, he was happy to have devoted “at least a part of” his life “to help other human beings,” just as he had intended back in 1924.

————

1 – My own experience, most recently the office party I went to the other night, is interfering heavily here, I think.

——————

References

Sunday July 27

by


Again C.I.

I am so unhappy

I went to the C.I. Synagogue
to say Kadish

I always had the greatest
sympathy for those who
said Kadish

and now I am one of
those unfortunate

—————–

Sometimes I feel irrationally helpless when I look at Papa’s entries, as if I could relieve his unhappiness if only I tried hard enough. He seems to have tapped a new vein of sadness, too, recently remarking on his hard luck and boredom and constant worries. Even Coney Island, where he at least enjoyed the water and the breezes and the scenery once in a while, registers as little more than another place to mourn, as if its only attraction was a surreal, synagogue-themed simulacrum off the Boardwalk.

I have little more to say right now other than Papa, this is you:


I miss him today.

Saturday Aug 9

by


During the day in the cool
ocean waves of C.I. In evening
I deserted my many friends
in whose company I’d spent the
day, to go the Prayer services to
say Kadish.

Tisha B’ab Eve

Thousands of years after the
destruction of Jerusalem a big synagogue
on the gay seashore of C.I. on a hot
summer night is crowded to capacity
bewailing the greatest disaster in
Israels history. Many removed
their shoes sitting on the floor,
Slowly the familiar mournful melody
of “Aichu” is read. Among them
I sat with eyes moist bewailing a
land which neither I nor my parents
or my great great parents ever saw
but still no near to me.

That is the miracle of Israels eternal life

—————–

Matt’s Notes

In a religious tradition with its fair share of sad holidays, Tisha B’Av is the saddest Jewish holiday of all. It commemorates the destruction of First Temple and the Second Temple, both of which occurred on the same date, as did a number of other subsequent tragedies. I’ve never personally worshiped during Tisha B’Av, though I know the mournful “Aichu” Papa refers to is usually written as “Eicha” and means “Lamentations.”

Religious faith is, as I’ve mentioned before, one facet of Papa’s character I cannot locate in my own — I am simply not a person of faith. Still, I’m touched by the intensity of Papa’s devotion, the image of tears in his eyes as a sad prayer is read, the sense of eternal connection he shares with past and future generations of Jews through the mournful ritual of Tisha B’Av. The sadness is a miracle to him because it makes the long-lost land of Israel almost tangible, and no doubt sustains his faith in the eventual success of his Zionist efforts.

This year, though, I’m sure deep spiritual contemplation of destruction and recovery is even more important to Papa since he is in the throes of his own violent personal change. His father’s death has, I think, wrenched away any thought he ever entertained of recovering the sense of belonging he felt with his family in the old country. As Papa himself has written, his father represented to him everything good in the world, and his death triggered a feeling in Papa akin to “lost paradise.”

In short: Papa had experienced, with the death of his father, the destruction of his own temple. His tearful awe over “the miracle of Israels eternal life,” maintained through mourning, must have touched him profoundly as he sought a way to maintain his father’s legacy. Perhaps Papa’s own efforts to help reinvent and rebuild a new, modern Israel inspired by ancient faith helped him realize that he, too, could build a new life for himself inspired by his father’s example. Was that understanding, not yet consciously realized, partly responsible for the tears in Papa’s eyes on this hot August night?

[posted from Mexico]

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The guy who sold me the photo below claims they’re of a Coney Island synagogue, and while I don’t necessarily believe him, I am relatively sure they were taken in Brooklyn in the late 1920’s:

Here’s a closer look at the synagogue:

I wish I knew what the guy with the pushcart was selling. Looks like it might be ices of some sort:

Wednesday Aug 20

by


Just a little ride to C.I.
with Blanche.

————–

Matt’s Notes

I’m pretty sure Papa’s Coney Island companion on this day was a new character named Blanche, though I might be reading the name wrong (the “a” after the “l” doesn’t look exactly like his usual “a,” but I can’t think of what else it might be):

Whatever her name might be, I wonder who she is and how Papa met her. Could she be “Miss R.,” the “American girl” who expressed her affection for him a couple of days ago? He said he planned to take her out, and he often did his romancing on public transportation trips like train or ferry rides to Coney Island. He certainly would have been happy to be among the couples strolling the boardwalk rather than wistfully observing them from afar, as he has done in the past.

On the other hand, Papa said he planned to take Miss R. to a concert, and this entry seems a bit brief and offhand for a description of such a potentially important date. The phrase “just a little ride to C.I.” could indicate the jaunty cheerfulness of someone who’s had a great time with a new gal and can’t be bothered to describe it right now, or it could literally mean that his trip to Coney with Blanche was nothing remarkable. We’ve never met Blanche before, but since Papa’s diary isn’t a novel it often introduces his well-known acquaintances without ceremony, as it recently did with Clara II. Is Blanche just an old friend?