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Enjoyed, Cabaleria Rusticany
and Pagliacci at the opera

I found a message from
Lemus to attend the funeral
of Friedman’s wife.

Filled out my income
report according to the
counsel of my notary
public Mr. Wallinger

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Matt’s Notes

Whenever possible I listen to the music, read the literature, and see the films Papa discusses in his diary, and recently I had the good fortune to see, at the Metropolitan Opera, the same double bill of Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana Papa mentioned above. Until now any encounters I had with opera were purely accidental, the last one coming when I was a wee lad of 23 and then only because the words “free,” “ticket” and “girl” were involved. Though impressed with the players’ effort, I was generally distracted and came away feeling like I had missed the boat on opera appreciation.

So, to join the evening crowds at the Met — deliberately, with my own nice wife, and on my own power — and set down to pay attention was something I might never have done if I hadn’t started this diary project. And, as is always the case with the arts I experience on Papa’s “recommendation,” I found myself unexpectedly and powerfully absorbed by the proceedings. I was amazed, in general, because the things I saw and heard were the very things Papa saw and heard. This timelessness is, I suppose, an inherent quality of anything classical or traditional; even though Giovanni Martinelli sang Canio in 1924 and Salvatore Licitra sang him in 2007 (to raves from the New York Times) there’s a certain thrill to knowing Pagliacci has been essentially unchanged for generations.

But, there’s more to it than that; when I attended I was entirely awash in the sentimentality and melodrama of the work, and not just because Pagliacci and Cavalleria are so sentimental melodramatic. When I was a kid I used to pretend that Papa was hovering over my shoulder — in school, at home, when I was playing outside — hoping he was there to make sure everything came out all right. Maybe I still hope so; maybe that’s why I want to see the things Papa saw and do the things he did. It makes me I feel a little like we’re sitting side by side for a few hours, silently enjoying each other’s company. I know he would be beaming, smiling — fulfilled, entirely, just to be near me, to see me with my wife, to know I was alive. Under those circumstances, any song of love or loss or melancholy floating up from the stage becomes something else, the music for my own little opera, my duet with a ghost who I can’t touch or speak to but who means everything to me.

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Additional references for this post:

• Here’s some more information on Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci from the Metropolitan Opera site

• The Metropolitan Opera house Papa went to was on Broadway and 39th Street, not far from the garment district where he most likely worked. The Met’s site has plenty of interesting historical information, and Wikipedia has a nice overview as well.
• Thanks to Daniel Kelley for the phrase “Duets with Ghosts,” which is the title of his new CD. Give it a listen if you know what’s good for you.

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Update 3/12

Mom adds about Papa’s love of opera:

I think Papa went very often, but was only able to afford standing room at that time. When I was growing up, he listened to the Met broadcast on radio, hosted by Milton Cross, every Saturday.

Enjoyed this evening
a lecture by Mr. Grant
a christian, but a fine
type of a Zionist at the
2nd Zionist district.

He ought to be an
example to certain Jews
as how to be a good Jew.

————-

Matt’s Notes

I’m hardly qualified to comment on Chrisitan Zionism, though I’ve always understood it to be motivated more by biblical dictates than concern for the Jewish people. It’s certainly made for some strange bedfellows in the modern era; I wonder how a proto-lefty like Papa would have felt about the conservative ideals of today’s higher profile, evangelical Christian Zionists.

Sticky politics aside, I do find Papa’s language in this entry to be unusually strident. But, as we’ve seen before, Zionism and Judaism were simply one and the same for him and were essential to his spiritual identity. Jews who did not support a Jewish homeland baffled and disappointed him, and nothing made him happier than to see previously non-Zionist Jews throw their support behind the movement (we saw this in an earlier entry, when he attended a ceremony at which the United Hebrew Trades, after years of a strictly domestic agenda, officially announced its support for Jewish workers in Palestine).

Visited sisters and friend
Mike Weinreich there
spending all evening

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

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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?

Eventless day, in afternoon
visited friends, and the
Zionist office, wrote there
an article for Dos (?) Yidishe Folk
critisizing the Z.Z.

Every morn. & eve, includes
now prayer service at the
synagogue with Kadish

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Matt’s Notes

The newspaper Papa refers to above, Dos Yiddishe Folk (The Jewish Nation) was an organ of the Zionist Organization of America (Z.O.A.), the group for whom Papa did most of his fundraising and recruiting work. The offices where Papa wrote his article were at 114 Fifth Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets, a healthy stroll from Papa’s neighborhood but one I’m sure he was glad to take — he was just starting a week off from work and would have wanted to stay occupied to keep depressing thoughts of his father’s recent death at bay.

The Z.O.A. published a number of other periodicals, including, according to the 1923-1924 American Jewish Yearbook, The New Palestine, a weekly, Hatoren, a monthly in Hebrew, and Young Judean, a monthly for Jewish youth in English. Dos Yiddishe Folk was the oldest of the bunch, having first appeared in 1908 when the Z.O.A. still called itself the Federation of American Zionists. (The group’s only earlier publication was a monthly started in 1901 called The Maccabean, but it looks like it was defunct by the 1920’s.)

Here’s a little more on Dos Yiddishe Folk from its own masthead:

Dos Yiddishe Folk, published weekly in the interest of Americas Zionists, by the Zionist Publishing Corp., 114 Fifth Ave., New York.
Telephone Chelsea 10,4000. Abraham Goldberg, Editor; Simon
Bernstein, Managing Editor. Subscription Rates: Payable in advance,
U.S. for 1 year, $2.50; Canada, for 1 year, $3.00; Foreign, for
1 year, $3.50. Single copies 5 cents. Entered as second class matter
February 26, 1909 at the post office at New York, N.Y. under the
Act of March 3, 1879.

In one of the happier moments I’ve had since starting Papa’s Diary Project, I was able to find the article he mentions above on microfilm in the Dorot Room of the New York Public Library.

Praises Editorial in “The Jewish Nation” Concerning the Youth of Zion Convention

Esteemed Comrade Editor,

Allow me to express in our “Jewish Nation” a few words thanking you for the editorial in your most recent edition, about the Youth of Zion convention which recently took place in Buffalo.

As someone who has been well acquainted with the aforementioned organization since its establishment, as well as with its activities, I know what harm they are doing with their separatist policies that are of no use to anyone. Everyone knows the truth, that they do nothing for their own organization as well. In the beginning, a few ringleaders, who were looking for publicity, tried to convince members of Zionist clubs to join them, and they even tried to break up these clubs. At first, some Zionists believed that they would be able to do something in order to appeal to young people with the Land of Israel ideology. But soon everyone saw that this was nothing with nothing. They created a little club in which they could play the roles of “leaders,” and they intoxicate people, encouraging them to fight against the Zionist organization. They prey upon young, recently arrived Zionists from Europe and tell them stories, the Zionist organization in America is too chauvinistic, capitalistic, etc… And the naïve young people, who sincerely believe what they are told, then find themselves unemployed: they are torn away from Zionism and they are given no other work to perform. I am convinced that the honest members of the Youth of Zion organization will have to do what many of their comrades have done for the past two years: they left the Youth of Zion organization and joined the “General” Zionist organization where, whoever wants to, can find their own place and their own tasks to perform.

It is worthwhile to mention that even the “Jewish Nation” greatly exaggerated the amount of money the Youth of Zion raised for the Pioneer Fund. Here, we saw a small group of young Zionists, who are regular members of the second and third districts, collecting money for the World Pioneer Center. There were perhaps not fewer of them than there were members of the Youth of Zion, and they went about their task with no ceremony or publicity, without “leaders” or “national executives.”

And is it not just awful when people organize a so-called convention, and they send a telegram to President Coolidge, and a cable to Prime Minister Macdonald? Do these young people not understand what the Jewish public thinks about such comic and irresponsible actions? Therefore, I offer you my sincere congratulations for your excellent editorial.

With respect and Zionist wishes,

Avrom-Zvi Sheyerman

Just strolled around with
some friends this evening

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Matt’s Notes

With temperatures in the low 70’s and no signs of rain, this was a lovely night for a stroll. Papa certainly went to synagogue to say Kadish for his father before joining his friends.

Here’s how he looked in his summer hat:

And here are some street scenes from the 20’s:

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Image sources: “Signaling to offices, curb market, New York City (1922)” and “People looking at plants in park, New York City (1920)” . Since these shots are of Bryant Park and Wall Street, respectively, they really have nothing to do with Papa and his friends on the Lower East Side in the summer of 1924, but I figured they were interesting anyway (the Wall Street shot). Both are from the Library of Congress with no known restrictions on publication.

Another fruitless day

Looking back I see that I
have almost the same identical
ideas of 10 years ago, I am
still single and still in search
of happiness but more vigorous.

While some younger folks
who once sang the same songs
as I still do, of a love to come
are long married and [are] fathers or
mothers, and I am still weaving
my dreams.

They have realized their sought
happiness and have other ideas now
which matrimonial evolution brings along
But even to dream of a romance
(that might not come perhaps)
is also beautiful, even if painful
as in my case, because of my
great longing.

————-

Sigh. I’m going on vacation for two weeks and will only have spotty Internet access, but I hope to get a few posts in here and there. But I think this entry is an appropriate note on which to pause. It reads like the words of a chorus, or as if Papa himself has stopped at the end of an act, turned to his audience, and summed up everything sad and wistful and lovely about this moment in his life.

Since his arrival in America eleven years ago, Papa has been, I think, in a sort of limbo, with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new. He senses this and acknowledges it when he says he has the “same identical ideas of ten years ago,” though I’m not sure he knows why. When he came here he was already eighteen, a young adult ready to take his next step into maturity. Suddenly, though, the terrain changed on him, and perhaps the unfamiliarity froze him in place just as he was about to move forward. Or maybe the simple need to survive and work and get oriented, or the happy distraction of living with and supporting his sister after she arrived, prevented certain facets of his character from developing in the way they might have. To outside observers he was a competent, upstanding, generous young man, but still something held him back.

So what was it? Lately I’ve come to think that the very source of comfort and strength that kept him going through his early years in this country may have been the very force that kept him in place: his love for his family back home, especially for the father he admired so much. By idealizing them, fantasizing about the day he might be with them again, entertaining impossible thoughts of bringing them over from Sniatyn, he may have prevented himself from leaving them behind. Without knowing it, he allowed his need to depend on them to prevent him from exploring his own independence. Instead, he became practiced at weaving dreams and singing songs of what might be, but not as good at embracing what was.

I think he knew all this. In this entry he acknowledges his stasis, contrasts himself with others who have changed through “matrimonial evolution,” shows how much he, too, would like to feel the force of change. Yet he has a poet’s attachment to his state of perpetual loneliness, unable to reject his beautiful capacity for dreaming even though it pains him. Still, I wonder if something new is happening to him, if something significant has triggered this ode to his “great longing.” Could it be that he’s taking a long, last glance at something he’s preparing to let go?

Papa has been preoccupied with the sense of “lost paradise” he’s felt since his father died in May. I think what he really lost was his attachment to the old country and his impossible, boyish need to remain partly in the world he once knew. The death of his father may have jolted Papa in the same way his arrival in America did eleven years before, unexpectedly shaking the past’s hold on him. Is he ready, at last, to plant both feet in America, to stop living so much in his dreams and instead start embracing what’s tangible? As he pauses today to take stock of his life, is he planning to start the next act? Are we seeing the sign of internal change that would allow him, the following year, to be less restless, to meet, commit to, and pursue the woman he would marry and with whom he would start his own family?

Evening at Sisters
and home.

The privacy of having
my own little home is all right
but it is terrible lonesome.
I wish I could find some
man to suit me to live with
me that I may have
someone to talk to.

The many girls I’ve met
in the last weeks have
not inspired me to be entered
in this book.

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Matt’s Notes (Posted from Mexico)

Papa’s entries have been so sad lately, so focused on his loneliness and boredom, that it’s hard to believe he’s been socially active over the last few weeks and hasn’t been telling us about it. Has he met a bunch of unispiring women through his marriage broker, through friends, or at social events? Maybe one of his sisters invited someone over to meet him this evening, and his disappointment with her prompted him to speculate on whether it might just be better to find a roommate to keep him company. (Once in a while it seems like Papa is missing an English word from his vocabulary, and the way he writes “some man to suit me to live with” leads me to think he didn´t know the expression “roommate.” Then again, maybe it wasn’t commonly used in the 20’s. Please write or comment if you know anything about such things.)

Papa intensely disliked being alone, yet yesterday he described some romantic feelings about his ongoing solitude and today he makes a cursory nod toward the advantages of privacy. Maybe this means he´s trying to talk himself out of the deep, absorbing depression he´s felt for the last few weeks, to find a less pessimistic take on his isolation. Is he starting to feel a bit better?