Zionism

Thursday Jan 3

by


After work, at the Zionist Central
office I’ve been approached by the well
known poet, Imber to do something
for him, I promised to be on a comittee
to arrange an evening.

Attended afterward a meeting
of the E.S. Keren Haysod Comittee
and later in the evening
a banquet at Garfeins in honor
of Mr. Angrist, who is leaving for Pal.
I was happy indeed to do honor
to such a worthy Man as Mr.
Angrist, whom I count as one of
the best Zionists.

I was greatly impressed by
the speeches of the guests.
I reached home again at 2 am
but surely I don’t regret staying
out late at such gatherings.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

Like many Jews who had grown up in the repressive, sequestered environments of European shtetls, Papa passionately believed in the idea of Jewish statehood and spent much of his free time raising funds, “arranging an evening” here or there and “staying out late at such gatherings” as Zionist meetings and receptions. His mention of the “Keren Haysod Comittee” is historically interesting because Keren Hayesod (as its name is typically written in English) is now a large international organization, but it was only four years old when my grandfather and his colleagues gathered at the East Side chapter meeting described here. Were they in unheated rooms, wrapped in overcoats and sucking on cigarettes while they laid their plans? Or were they already well-established, pulling ahead of other organizations that hatched in the wake of the Balfour Declaration? Did they pursue their Zionist dreams in the very Lower East Side spaces where New Yorkers now pursue candied sea urchin cocktails and chocolate mojitos? I’ll write Keren Hayesod for more information and see what they have to say.

If you’re familiar with Israel’s history, you might have felt a little jolt at the mention of “the well known poet, Imber”, but settle down — Naftali Herz Imber, who wrote the lyrics to Hatik vah (the Israeli national anthem) died in 1909. Papa is probably talking about Samuel Jacob Imber, a Galician poet who spent a few years in America. With only the Internets at my disposal I can’t find out much about him at the moment other than that he wrote in Yiddish and was killed by Nazis in 1942, but please drop a comment below if you know more.

I’m also not sure who Mr. Angrist is or what Garfein’s is — perhaps it’s the home of a man named Garfein, or maybe it’s a long-lost, schmaltz-soaked eatery like Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse. I again picture my Papa and his cohorts crammed together, toasting the august Mr. Augrist with bread and salt, shouting over one another to pay proper tribute (and for some reason I also picture them seated Last Supper-style, which tells you more about my high regard for my grandfather than my knowledge of Zionist banquets.) Anyone out there have a picture of a 20’s era Zionist gathering, or any information on who Mr. Augrist might be?

Update:

A Jewish friend from South Africa, asked if she’s heard of Keren Hayesod, writes:

…of course I’ve heard of Keren Hayesod. The [South African] Jewish community was so homogenous and so Zionist that when I was growing up all tzedokkah went to United Israel Appeal and we had the blue and white ‘pushkas’ (charity boxes) from Keren Hayesod. I used to get mad because we were giving old clothing, etc to people in Israel rather than the poor of South Africa. I even did ‘bob-a-jobs’, as we called them, for KH. You’d go round to old Jewish people’s homes to help them with some small task in return for a donation to Israel.

Interesting. I just didn’t know about KH until I read about them in Papa’s diary.

Saturday Jan 5

by


The day was dull as usual,
and in the evening I was rather
busy, I attended two balls,
The first one was the Zionist Ball
at Webster Hall, by the Tikvath
Yehuda Club, the 2nd the
Jewish Authors Ball, at 71st Reg.
Armory, I enjoyed both as
I met numerous friends, I
had only one dance at each and
of course walzes My favorite.
As usual I wore my tuxedo,
The many girls I saw were
really beautiful very beautiful
but none of them appealed to me,
Jazz-babies, wild women, and
none of that good type which
appeals to me and so rare among
women.

—————-

Matt’s Notes

Since I’ve started this blog I’ve thought a lot about what I do and don’t share with my grandfather. This entry’s got a few easy ones: I’ve seen the inside of Webster Hall (which is still at its original 11th Street location) but not the long-demolished 71st Regiment Armory (though a piece of it adorns the subway stop under its former location). I own a tuxedo, but I can’t waltz. I can’t imagine that I’d ever find the women at something called The Jewish Authors’ ball to be too “wild”, but I didn’t grow up in the old country.

A more challenging thing to think about is how the Jewish orientation of his social and spiritual life did not find its way to me. Though I rocked a brown Pierre Cardin three-piecer at my Bar Mitvah, I had decided long before that I was an atheist (I’m Jewish, all right, but God just doesn’t compute). I’ve known a few more religious Jews who, like my grandfather, spent their weekends going around to Jewish events and kept their social lives within sometimes large but always well-established Jewish circles; the parameters appealed to me in the abstract but I couldn’t imagine myself inside them. If know if I were single I’d never use jdate.com, though I get giddy over their “why is this site different from all other sites” billboard (this may sum up where my head’s at more than anything). Then again, while I never went out looking for nice Jewish girls when I was single, I wound up marrying one and I’m very glad to have her. In fact, she’s probably exactly the kind of woman Papa would have liked — pretty, but a “good type” as well.

Hmmm. I’m not sure where I’m going with this and it’s time to wrap up this post (I write these in the morning before work and revisit them at the end of the day, in case you’re wondering) but in reading over the above paragraph I realize I’m triangulating to find whatever kernel of my Papa still survives in me. I get the feeling it won’t be the last time.

Update 1/14

Here’s a photo of my grandfather in the tuxedo he mentions above (at least I assume so; this photo is signed and dated 1919 and I imagine he didn’t get another tuxedo in the intervening five years).

Interestingly, this photo is printed on a postcard, and it’s not the only postcard we have featuring a studio shot of my grandfather. I’ll have to learn more, but I assume it was typical to have these kinds of postcards made up as calling cards. This particular card was made, according to the raised stamp, at photo studio “L. Borressoff, 365 Grand St, N.Y.”

The note on the on the front reads “Sincerely yours Harry Scheurman New York July 1919.” I think it was Papa’s favorite shot of himself, too, because in 1925 he wrote a note on the back and sent it to a woman he was courting named Jean. That was my grandmother. This card came from a box of her memorabilia.

Update 1/17

“Cabinet cards” like the one above were indeed common back then. Descended from smaller cartes de visite (visiting cards) popularized by military officers in the early 1800’s, they had evolved into the larger style pictured here by the 1860’s.

For more, check out Wikipedia’s carte-de-visite entry and City Gallery’s Cabinet Card entry. (Thanks to Durya at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for the pointers.)

Thursday Jan 10

by


Attended meeting of our newly
organized camp of the order
Sons of Zion,
I’m glad that my motion
to call name our org, Maccabean
was passed although after a big battle.

I accepted the nomination
and Election of Master of Ceremonies
and I certainly will see to it
that all rituals be strictly
enforced.

[note: a continuation of the next day’s entry fills the bottom of this page]

—————————

Matt’s Notes

Looks like Papa was a member of a Jewish fraternal order, and presumably in his capacity as Master of Ceremonies he was the keeper of rituals and parliamentary procedures. At the moment I have no idea what they were up to (I’ve never joined any sort of order myself, though I am a member of the Film Forum at the $150 level) but I’m looking into it (and please chime in if you know anything about Jewish fraternal organizations). Papa’s account of a “big battle” over the group’s nickname hints at some organizational self-importance or frivolity, but I really I don’t think he’d be part of it unless it was somehow directed toward raising funds for a Jewish homeland, serving the labor movement or performing acts of charity.

Then again, maybe it was just a club. Papa was single, prone to sadness, and in only the 11th year of reconstructing his life from scratch in a burgeoning, indifferent city; he might have just wanted to go somewhere for a heated discussion every so often, to replace the people he had lost with a few manufactured “brothers,” to hedge against loneliness. He was just a human being, after all. I’ll need to remind myself of this as the year progresses, to view his journal not as a lost gospel but a sliver of a life, a look at a twenty-nine-year-old, a man younger than me, who had not yet become who he would be. As I mentioned previously, he has been an abstraction to me all these years, remembered more as a feeling than as a real person. To see him as fallible and real is, perhaps, another way to relate to him more closely, to put his example within reach.

Update

Shows you how much I know. The above meditation on relating to my grandfather still stands, but in poking around a little more I’ve learned that immigrant fraternal organizations cropped up all over the place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Fraternal societies played a big role in American life back then; for many immigrants, to join an order was a way to become in effect more American.1

Jewish immigrants formed plenty of their own orders, often geared toward community service (B’nai Brith is a well-known example, though until today I knew nothing of its fraternal origins). B’nai Zion, my grandfather’s order, was formed in 1908 and still operates today as a charitable organization. When Papa joined, they were certainly not frivolous — they helped provide life insurance to immigrants and were closely allied with Keren Hayesod. (For more, check out the B’nai Zion Web site). I’ve been in touch with them, so I’ll add updates as I learn more.

—————–

References for this post

1 – Soyer, Daniel, “Entering the ‘Tent of Abraham’: Fraternal Ritual and American-Jewish Identity, 1880-1920”, Religion and American Culture, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 159-182

Saturday Jan 12

by


Slept late, in the evening visited
the K.H. office, the 2nd and 3rd Zionist
Districts and the remainder of the time
about 3 1/2 hours (from 11:30pm to 3:00am) at
the Cafe Royal.

Goldstein introduced me to Dr. Murdoni
the famous dramatic critic, the Dr. M.
told me of a sad experience
while in Siberia on a mission of the
Russian Jewish Relief Comittee during
the war, He met ther 500 Galician
Jews in one place, very religious
old jews and jewesses and children
were forced to live among the
wild Tatars in the villages in
Siberia, where they were forced to go
for no reason whatever, and what
horrible experiences they had to go there.

Only one picture of the Golus

————–

Matt’s Notes

Yesterday Papa talked about escaping to the movies, but today he’s got more serious things on his mind. It’s interesting to be reminded that, as modern and American as his life seems, he could relate quite closely the dark, almost regressive-sounding world of the Jews in “Dr. M’s” story. His life might easily have gone that way and he knows it.

I had a bit of trouble reading a couple of words in this entry. I’m not sure if I got “Dr. Murdoni” right or the word “Golus”. Take a look below and see if you think I got them right. Any idea who or what he could be talking about?

——————-

Updates

1/13 – I didn’t have much time to poke around when I wrote this yesterday, but a quick Web search today reveals a bit about the term “Golus.” “The Golus,” as my grandfather uses it, roughly refers to the Diaspora and the plight of Jews in exile. So, when he refers to “Dr. M’s” story of Jews being shipped to Siberia as “one picture of the Golus,” he means it’s one example of Jewish suffering in the absence of a Jewish homeland. The more strident Zionists scorned and sought to eliminate the “golus mentality,” which they saw as a tendency for Jews to resign themselves to defeat and abuse.

Papa didn’t have a violent bone in his body (my mother tells a story of him reprimanding my cousin for swatting a bee because “even a bee has a right to live”) but he must have had a touch of distaste for the image of the “golus Jew,” else he wouldn’t have pushed to nickname his B’nai Zion lodge “The Maccabeans” after the Jewish warrior heroes of the Hannukah story.

2/4 – I just came across a February 26th article in the New York Times about the Yiddish theater that mentions Cafe Royal. Looks like it was on 2nd Avenue and 12th street and was, according to the article, a hangout for Yiddish actors. My mother adds that “it was a gathering place for ‘intelligentsia’ to meet, greet and harangue each other. It was very popular back in the day.”

4/7 – Ari, an Assistant Professor of American Studies at UC Davis, adds:

…Second Avenue was known as “the Yiddish Rialto” or Yiddish Broadway, as it housed most of the Yiddish theaters in NYC. The Royal was the hangout for artists and intellectuals, who would go there before and after the shows, to debate politics, communism, and whatever they wanted to.

And:

Dr. Murdoni is, in fact, Alexander Mukdoni, a prominent and prolific Yiddish theater critic. Most of his work is rendered in Yiddish, and not much of it is translated, but there should be a good bio out there somewhere. He was quite well-respected and very serious about his criticism, scholarship and journalism.

Thursday Jan 17

by


Home & Radio as usual

Earlier in the evening I
was rather busy arranging
the Massmeeting for the
Z.O.A. for Mon. Jan 28. I have
secured Ab. Goldberg and Maurice
Samuel as the principal speakers
but I am not yet through
the worst part is yet to come

This is my last effort to
revive the first Zionist dist.
If I should fail here I give
up. I told it to Blitz and
my conscience will not bother
me as I have tried my best,
but I do hope the meeting
will turn out a success.

—————————-

Once again, Papa shows heavy involvement in the early development of what would become a prominent Zionist group. Though the Zionist Organization of America (Z.O.A.) was relatively more established than the Sons of Zion in 1924 (it had been around since 1897) Papa’s chapter was clearly in trouble. His choice of words (“If I should fail here I give up”) and the presence of a mysterious supervisor named “Blitz” remind me of a cold-war spy novel, though I assume Papa was meeting with Blitz in the open and not passing envelopes to him in a darkened alleyway or whispering to him from behind a copy of the Forward at a kosher lunch counter (he did, however, wear a fedora). Still, with the future of the Zionist movement in doubt and anti-Semitism growing in Europe by the moment, Papa must have felt like the stakes were urgently high for the Z.O.A’s success.

I’m not clear on what his frustrations with the progress of the first “district” were but he certainly secured a couple of good speakers for the January 28 mass meeting. Abraham Goldberg was the primary face of the Z.O.A. in 1924, and remained a key figure as it evolved. I won’t even think about tackling the enormous history of Zionist factions, feuds and alliances in the early 20th century, but Goldberg figures prominently throughout (he was so identified with Zionism that he was listed in the phone book at “Goldberg Abraham Zionist“1). Alas, the helpful people at the Z.O.A. don’t think many of their records from the 20’s have survived, so more details on Papa’s district may be a long time coming.

Maurice Samuel, the other speaker Papa booked, would make a splash later that year with the publication of his book You Gentiles, which characterized the social, emotional and cultural differences between Jews and Gentiles as fundamental, irreconcilable obstacles to mutual understanding. Admired in its day for its frankness and still admired by some for certain well-articulated sentiments, it has, perhaps not surprisingly, become a minor touchstone for anti-Semites of all stripes who like to quote its more resolute passages as proof of Jewish otherness and general nastiness. In any event, Samuel continued as a prominent writer, speaker and Yiddish literature scholar and would be noted for many other accomplishments; You Gentiles is absent from Irving Howe’s 1972 New York Times obituary of Samuel, which cites The World of Sholom Aleichem as his best work.

————–

References for this post

1 – Howe, Irving “Maurice Samuel, 1895-1972“, The New York Times, May 21, 1972

Adams, J. Donald, “Jew And Gentile“, The New York Times, September 7, 1924

“A. Goldberg Dead; Leader in Zionism“, The New York Times, June 6, 1942

Also, thanks to the Zionist Organization of America for their help.

Monday Jan 21

by

My birthday today according
the Jewish calendar, celebrated
in bitter disappointments of
the past, blasted hopes etc.
but with a hope for a brighter
future.

Attended Dr. Thon’s reception
meeting at Cooper Union enjoyed
speeches of Weitzman Lipsky and
others. Some more mental food.

The picture of my niece
Tabale with her husband in
bridal dress which first
arrived today, brought a tear
from my eyes. I recalled old
happy memories when we were
all together, and I left her a
small child.

How everything has changed.

—————————–

Matt’s Notes

Sometimes what Papa writes is so sad that I don’t know whether to comment on it or just let it stand on its own, but a few things really get me about this entry.

It’s bitterly ironic for him to rattle off “the bitter disappointments of the past, blasted hopes etc.” going through his head on his birthday, as if those things are de rigueur for birthdays (he would have turned 29 this day by the Hebrew calendar, which in my book is as good as, or even worse, than turning 30 for prompting soul-searing soul searching). He adds a typical dose of optimism in noting his “better hopes for the future,” but I’m not sure he believes it at this moment. (He’s so low that he barely touches on the event he attended, in which the true heavyweights of Zionism gathered at Cooper Union, one of the most storied intellectual venues of the day.)

The wistfulness keeps piling on, as often seems to happen when you’re having a depressing day, with the arrival of his niece’s wedding photo. The distance and years separating him from Tabale, and by extension his parents and other siblings, must strike him on this day even harder than it might have. Even thoughts about the sister and niece who live right around the corner don’t help. And, since his self-reflection no doubt centers on what his life is coming to, whether he’s running out of time to make his mark, and whether he’ll ever have a family of his own, the image of his young niece already on her way to building a life for herself must feel all the more bittersweet.

Again, though, maybe this analysis is not necessary. It’s enough to think of him as he arrives home from his lecture and there’s an envelope from the old country waiting for him on the kitchen table, he’s excited for news from home, so he opens it by gas light, or maybe his hosts are asleep or he can’t spare a coin for the gas meter so instead he sits up on his rented cot in the corner of the parlor, and it’s too dark to read the letter so he pulls out the photo instead and angles it toward the window, and so by the street light he squints and turns his head and turns the photo and finally he makes out the image of his niece, all but unrecognizable as the little girl he last saw, standing in her wedding gown, standing with a man he doesn’t recognize, by now his eyes have adjusted to the low light and he would like to see the picture more clearly but he can’t blink away his tears, so he stretches out on his cot and looks around the room at the candles and cups and bowls and books, all of them belong to another family, everything he owns fits under his cot in a trunk and he has no one, no one but his diary to share his thoughts with on his birthday.

——————————-

I don’t have any pictures of Tabale from 1924, but she’s in this picture sent from Snyatyn in 1938. Tabale is second from the left, her husband is the tall guy in the middle rear, and her kids are up front.

Here are their faces:

Oh, and by the way — Papa, this is you:

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.”

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