Uncategorized

As dull as ever

——–

Matt’s Notes

When Papa says things are “as dull as ever,” perhaps he genuinely intends to say his life has little variety and little excitement (something New Yorkers incongruously complain about from time to time when, of course, we experience more stimulation walking down the street for thirty seconds than most people experience in their entire lives). Still, though his factory job really does sound boring, he filled his spare time with so much Zionist work, blind dating, visits to his sisters, movies, ball games, and assorted balls and banquets that it would be difficult to look at his social calendar and find anything “dull” about it.

As we’ve come to learn, though, he is frustrated with more than just his extracurricular schedule. He is, in fact, experiencing a deep struggle with a sense of stasis, a feeling that he’s stuck in a cycle of unfulfilled daydreaming while everyone around him seems to have evolved, enviably, due to the changes triggered by marriage and family life. That said, we’ve also realized, perhaps before he has, that he is in the midst of a wrenching personal change triggered by the death of his father. What is happening to him now — the final casting-off of his childhood, his attachment to the old country, the idea that he might one day reunite with his family — is not easy, might not change his day-to-day routine, but it’s certainly not dull.

(Hebrew)

Stopped from work early, the
spirit of Erev Yom Kipur is spread
over the streets of New York,
sunset is approaching and so the
holiest of nights I just lit the
light for my fathers soul should rest
in peace.

I can hear now the prayers
and crying of the women in my
house as they are preparing to
go to the worship houses.

It is deeply touching.

I am so serious and embued
with a religious feeling.

May this year bring happiness
and joy to all of my family, friends
and all Israel, Amen.

I am off now to the Synagogue
to offer my prayers to the Allmighty.

——–

Matt’s Notes

Yom Kippur is a solemn, enthralling holiday for observant Jews, a day of fasting, prayer and, most significantly for Papa this year, open mourning for loved ones. The approach of this day and its attendant focus on his father’s recent death has, I think, embroiled Papa in a hidden drama for the last several weeks, a rigorous, taxing regimen of preparation and rehearsal, apprehension and anticipation, for a monumental personal test with no precedent or known goal. He has, both knowingly and in ways he cannot name, compared his lists of possessions and desires, rewritten his definition of home and family, and measured his capacity for hope at every turn of his sewing machine, at every subway ride, at every sip of coffee or forkful of food. It has been weeks since he has known a moment free of the question of how he might measure up.

His diary entries have reflected the effects of this exhausting, attenuated state. Perhaps, like a boxer training for a bout, he finds himself less willing to speak or waste energy on anything so impractical as speech. Then again, perhaps he has wanted to speak but could not. Perhaps his father’s death left a cavernous hole inside him, so dark and frightening that he had to keep it tightly sealed, and so the echoes of his thoughts and doubts and questions have remained trapped inside, crisscrossing, amplifying, canceling until they became an incomprehensible but unavoidable thrum.

Finally, though, Yom Kippur arrives, and Papa is at last allowed to see what happens when he ends his long wait, cracks open the seal, allows himself to mourn openly. The effect is instantly noticeable: He fills a page of his diary to its edges, waxes romantic in a way he has not for months, portrays a lovely image of a city cloaked in reverence, a neighborhood filled with cathartic cries, a moment free of practical cares. He could not have asked for more than this perfectly wistful moment, this perfectly Jewish moment in which pain and hope bind themselves together in a prayer for better times.

For the first time in months, Papa is himself again.

[no entry]

Note: Papa didn’t write anything in his diary from October 11 through October 15, but he accidentally wrote the following week’s entries on those pages instead of leaving them blank. So, his entry for October 18th appears on the October 11th page, his entry for the 19th appears on the October 12th page, etc., and he crossed out and changed the dates on the pages accordingly:

After a long series of contentious meetings with the Papa’s Diary Project Committee on Presentation and Editorial Integrity, I’ve decided to accept their recommendation and approach October 11-15 as if Papa left his pages blank, post what he wrote on the days he actually wrote them, and post the thumbnail images for all pages as they actually appear. That’s why there’s text on the thumbnail image for this page even though Papa didn’t write anything on this day. I hope this explanation will satisfy my legions of readers and stanch the flood of impassioned e-mail to which controversial choices like this inevitably lead.

[no entry today]

—————-

Papa didn’t write anything in his diary on October 14th, 1924 (he accidentally wrote his October 21st entry on the October 14th page, which is why you see writing on the image of the October 14th page at right). So, for those of you just joining us (perhaps you read about this site in today’s New York Times) below are links to posts about some of the major subjects my grandfather has covered thus far:

– “The 20th Century Girl”

– The New York Academy of Music

– B’nai zion, a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion, the fraternal order my grandfather belonged to

– Baseball

– The Capitol Theatre, one of New York’s great movie palaces

– Cars of the 1920’s

– Coney Island

– Calvin Coolidge

– The 1924 Democratic Convention, the longest and most contentious in history and the first to be broadcast live on the radio

– The Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field

– Fraternal organizations and mutual support societies, a.k.a. landsmanshaftn

– The New York Giants, 1924 pennant winners

– Keren Hayesod

– Silent Movies (1924 was a great year for movie lovers like my grandfather; several monumental films including The Thief of Badgad, The Ten Commandments, Sherlock, Jr., and D.W. Griffith’s America were out that year. I’m not sure if he saw any of those, but I do know he saw at least The Song of Love, The Unknown Purple, The White Sister with Lillian Gish, and A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin’s first serious directorial effort.)

– The Metropolitan Opera

– Papa’s Father’s Injury and Death

– Prohibition

– Prospect Park

– Early radio (Papa was an early radio adopter and frequently wrote about what he heard on New York stations like WEAF and WNYC)

– Sniatyn, Papa’s Ukrainian home town (part of Austro-Hungary when he left in 1913)

– The New York Subway

– Telephones in 1924

– Tenement life

– Woodrow Wilson

– The New York Yankees

– Yom Kippur

– Zionist Organization of America

[no entry today]

—————

Matt’s Notes

Papa’s periods of diary silence usually occur when he’s overwhelmed by difficult emotions, often in the aftermath of birthdays, holidays, or other milestones designed to trigger introspective stock-taking. We’re now five days into his latest quiet period (he accidentally wrote his October 22nd entry on his diary’s October 15th page, which is why you see writing on the October 15th image at right) related, I think, to the October 8th Yom Kippur holiday in which he mourned his beloved, recently-departed father for the first time.

His entries leading up to Yom Kippur were either non-existent or uncharacteristically abbreviated, and, with the exception of a long, lyrical passage on the eve of the holiday, he has maintained his quiet for almost two weeks. I have speculated for months on the nature of his grief and on the complicated internal struggles triggered by his father’s death but, no matter what I say, Papa’s own feelings remain, for him, inexpressible.

———

We know, of course, that Papa’s inherent optimism and capacity for constructive change would win out in the end; those who knew him would forever admire his sense of calm and warm, contented vibe. I expect, then, he would be satisfied by yesterday’s reaction to an article about this project in The New York Times, which has had results both expected (my mother enjoyed the article but felt it was too short) helpful (people have chimed in with research ideas and good comments) and fantastic (at least one e-mail from a long-lost relative and two from the descendants of a character who appears several times in the diary).

Meanwhile, for those of you just joining us, I’ll repeat yesterday’s list of links to posts about some of the major subjects my grandfather has covered thus far:

– “The 20th Century Girl”

– The New York Academy of Music

– B’nai zion, a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion, the fraternal order my grandfather belonged to

– Baseball

– The Capitol Theatre, one of New York’s great movie palaces

– Cars of the 1920’s

– Coney Island

– Calvin Coolidge

– The 1924 Democratic Convention, the longest and most contentious in history and the first to be broadcast live on the radio

– The Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field

– Fraternal organizations and mutual support societies, a.k.a. landsmanshaftn

– The New York Giants, 1924 pennant winners

– Keren Hayesod

– Silent Movies (1924 was a great year for movie lovers like my grandfather; several monumental films including The Thief of Badgad, The Ten Commandments, Sherlock, Jr., and D.W. Griffith’s America were out that year. I’m not sure if he saw any of those, but I do know he saw at least The Song of Love, The Unknown Purple, The White Sister with Lillian Gish, and A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin’s first serious directorial effort.)

– The Metropolitan Opera

– Papa’s Father’s Injury and Death

– Prohibition

– Prospect Park

– Early radio (Papa was an early radio adopter and frequently wrote about what he heard on New York stations like WEAF and WNYC)

– Sniatyn, Papa’s Ukrainian home town (part of Austro-Hungary when he left in 1913)

– The New York Subway

– Telephones in 1924

– Tenement life

– Woodrow Wilson

– The New York Yankees

– Yom Kippur

– Zionist Organization of America

Took Miss Phila, out
and it certainly was the
most boresome evening in
a long while

Jean certainly misjudges me,

————

Matt’s Notes

Though four days have elapsed since Papa first agreed to go out with “Miss Phila.”, his disinterest in her remains as strong as his annoyance with his cousin Jean for introducing him to her in the first place. I’d still like to know whether her last name is really “Phila” or if “Miss Phila.” is some kind of abbreviation, though I can’t imagine what for. She almost certainly isn’t Miss Philadelphia, 1924 (the lovely Ruth Malcomson, who went on to become Miss America) though maybe she’s the winner of some other contest geared more toward Papa’s community (“Miss Philacteries, 1924,” for example). Maybe she actually was from Philadelphia and Papa nicknamed her “Miss Phila.” just to objectify her, though even at his most impatient he wasn’t that mean-spirited.

Still, his dismissive tone leads me to wonder if poor Miss Phila. isn’t just an unfortunate, collateral casualty of Papa’s long-simmering dissatisfaction with Jean’s matchmaking skills, a dissatisfaction that may, in fact, deflect harder thoughts about his own chronic romantic frustration, itself a symptom of whatever keeps him searching for a perfect woman who doesn’t exist, keeps him from accepting anything less than an ideal mate, keeps him, in truth, from exiting the limbo he’s lived in since leaving the old country, dispensing with his dreamy attachment to the lost world of his youth, and, at last, seeing New York as the place to find his his wife, build his home, make a family of his own.

Jean misjudges Papa, indeed. He struggles, each day, with the question of why he prevents himself from having what he can instead of living for what he can’t. How could she know such a thing about him? And how could Papa know he would one day have his answer, unless I could somehow tell him:

Papa, this is you:

By mistake I wrote
for several days, at one
time on the wrong pages

I neglected my diary

Just the fact that Mrs.
Surdut introduced me
to a girl with $10.000, and
her family, must be entered.
But the girl does not appeal
to me.

The day I’d promise to marry
her, I’d be on easy street
because of her wealth,
but my heart says no

—————–

Matt’s Notes

I tend to discuss Papa’s chronic bachelorhood as just another symptom of his self-imposed limbo, a sign of his powerful emotional attachment to the old country, an illustration of his inability to see America as the place to marry and make a home. I’m fascinated with this angle because I know he would one day become an exemplary, self-sacrificing family man who was delighted with his life and exuded a sense of contentment.

Still, while I think it’s interesting to examine Papa’s diary in this way, I don’t want to generalize every moment he reports as if there aren’t other, less hidden forces at work. For example, we know Papa was an incurable romantic, a poetic soul who longed, no doubt, for an overwhelming, all-revealing love. This desire to wait for his heart, rather than his community or someone like Mrs. Surdut to choose his mate was not just sentimental, though; it was a distinctly American and modern innovation embraced, more boldly each year, by Papa’s contemporaries. (As we’ve discussed before, this was especially troubling to the old-style Jewish matchmakers who found it increasingly difficult to make a living on this side of the Atlantic.)

It’s hard to tell whether the wealthy woman mentioned above approved of Papa and would have consented to marry him, but the tone of this entry suggests she was Papa’s for the asking. I expect he chatted with her for a few hours, had cake and coffee with her parents in their well-appointed living room, and then went about his business while they decided if he was worthy of their $10,000. A few days later, there it was: a one-way ticket to easy street (I love this entry because Papa uses the expression “easy street” as if it were part of the popular vernacular, which of course it was) delivered to his door by a flushed, breathless, soon-to-be-disappointed Mrs. Surdut.

Papa may have been at odds with his place in the world and may have struggled with difficult internal battles, but he also just wanted to know what it was like to fall in love. I think I’ll just believe him when he writes “my heart says no,” let him gently break the news to Mrs. Surdut, and leave him to wonder, on his own, when the answer might be different.