Friday Aug 22

by


An entire evening talking
to friends on the phone.

And an appointment
with an unknown [to me] girl
for Monday Tues.

————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa installed a private telephone in his apartment back in June in order to, as he put it, “in my loneliness talk to my friends direct from my house.” I wonder if he had the same feelings for this technology as he did for his radio, a combination of fascination with its capabilities and a sense, especially on nights when it was his sole diversion, that it was a cold substitute for real companionship.

Saturday Aug 23

by


Attended a rather stormy
meeting of the 3 down town
districts at St. Marks Pl.
I took part in the discussion.

—————

The “down town districts” Papa mentions here are probably chapters of the Zionist Organization of America. The Z.O.A. was, at the time, a 40,000 member group closely affiliated with the womens’ group Hadassah, the fundraising organization Keren Hayesod, and Order Sons of Zion (B’nai Zion) the Zionist fraternal order to which Papa belonged.

Back in January, Papa had put quite a bit of pressure on himself to help revive the 1st district of the Z.O.A., organizing and publicizing a meeting with A-list guest speakers including the prominent Zionist figures Abe Goldberg and Maurice Samuel. He hasn’t mentioned the district since then, but I assume he represented it at the meeting mentioned above.

Where would this meeting have taken place? In a private home? A coffee house? Over dinner in a Jewish restaurant on the Lower East Side? Perhaps, since it was a Saturday, Papa and his comrades met in a synagogue after Shabbat services, or maybe, in the cool of this August evening, they strolled up to the the Z.O.A. offices on 5th Avenue and 12th Street. [Not sure what I was thinking when I wrote these last couple of sentences — he mentions that the meeting was on St. Marks place.]

I wonder, too, what kind of “stormy” debate Papa participated in during this meeting. The possibilities are limitless: They may have had a heated political discussion over the advantages of the movement’s left-wing socialist or right-wing militant philosophies; perhaps they needed to decide which of their less successful downtown districts to shut down; maybe they disagreed over how to best spread the word in lower Manhattan or about where the next fundraising event should take place.

Stridency was the order of the day in Papa’s Zionist circles, so I imagine whatever room he and his friends smoked up must have been really alive with argument if Papa noted the meeting’s contentiousness. (Even Papa, who we all remember as remarkably gentle and fair, could take the gloves off when he aired Zionist opinions — witness his strident language in an article he wrote for the Z.O.A. publication Dos Yiddishe Folk criticizing a rival Zionist group.) When he says he “took part in the discussion,” does he mean he jumped into the fray and shouted to be heard? Or, when faced with a room full of red-faced colleagues, did he try to restore civility and cool everyone down with quiet logic?

Sunday Aug 24

by


Took Blanche to a Ball
game at Yankee Stadium
and later one hour rowing
at Central Park and then
the Concert at the Mall, and
home.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

I’m still not sure who Blanche is, but in this, her second appearance in Papa’s diary, she enjoys veritable 1920’s New York montage of a day with Papa.
<!– –>
Things started off on a fine note with a Yankee victory over Detroit at the Stadium. New York sluggers Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel had quiet days, but the Yankees still scored eight runs while giving up only one. Was Blanche a baseball fan, or did Papa explain the game to her, show her how to keep score, lean in close to whisper during suspenseful moments? Did he wonder, on this pleasant August day, if this would be the first of many games he’d see with her?

I questioned a couple of days ago whether Blanche was an old friend of Papa’s or someone he’d just started dating, but today’s post-baseball row in Central Park leads me to think that romance was in the offing. Happily, Papa had practiced rowing in the Park earlier in the year, and perhaps he felt it paid off for him now. Was Blanch impressed by his comfort with his surroundings, his easy way with a rowboat, his rakishly-tilted straw boater?

And after rowing, a stroll over to the Mall, where they joined 60,000 others to see a concert featuring, among other selections, a couple of pieces by Wager and, luckily for Papa, his beloved Tchaikovsky. (I’m taking some liberties with the photo below since it’s from 1894, but it’s the best I could do.)

This concert was not, we should note, the August 24th performance at City College Stadium that Papa had thought about attending with the lively “Miss R.,” a woman who had expressed a matrimonial interest in him last week. Still, it was an outdoor show and it did take place on the same day, so perhaps this is further proof that Blanche and Miss R. were, as I speculated the other day, the same person.

Since I’ve said what the concert wasn’t, I should probably now say what it was: the summer’s final outdoor show conducted by the popular Edwin Franko Goldman, who received an award at intermission in honor of his triumphant season. Goldman likely wrapped up the show with a performance of “On the Mall,” a catchy march he’d just written that would go on to become his most famous composition. I wonder if, in later years, Papa felt proud to have been among the first to hear Goldman’s signature work. I wonder, too, if the strains of “On The Mall” always made him think of Blanche and the perfect day, full of potential, they shared together in 1924.

———————

References:

———–
Image Sources:

“Babe Ruth crossing the plate after making his first home run of the season today,” April 21, 1924. Library of Congress # LC-USZ62-97945. No known restrictions on publication.

“New York City views from Central Park. Across lake at 77th St. VI,” 1931. Library of Congress # LC-G623-T-15618

“The Mall, Central Park, N.Y. (looking south), 1894. Library of Congress #LC-USZ62-69575

Monday Aug 25

by


Attend an Executive m.
of the camp, at Nathan
Zichlinsky’s house in
Willoughby Ave. Bklyn. I
initiated and swore in
Treskinoff a new member.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

I love this entry. While we know what Papa’s talking about here — his chapter of the Zionist fraternal order B’nai Zion met in Brooklyn and Papa, as Master of Ceremonies, swore in a new member — the furtive quality of his sentences, the use of abbreviations, and the presence of a character named “Treskinoff” makes it seem like a passage from a spy novel, or maybe Doestoevsky.

Then again, the ritual Papa conducted would have involved some kind of secret combination of oaths, prayers, and the use of physical props, perhaps even in a candle-lit or blacked-out room. Maybe this put him into a clandestine, adventurous mood and accounts for the whiff of espionage on this page.

———————

Additional Note

Fraternal and mutual support organizations (a.k.a. landsmanshaftn) provided the only real sense of community for early Jewish immigrants, especially those who arrived befor the 20th Century. Their initiation rituals were accordingly elaborate, the better to establish a sense of exclusivity, belonging, and safety in a world where they were otherwise strangers. By the 1920’s, as the greater Jewish community grew more established and the process of assimilation less onerous, fraternal organizations played a less central role in the lives of people like Papa and their ceremonies, predictably, became a little more low-key. I’m sure the rite Papa administered to Treskinoff was far less involved than what their predecessors went through.

Tuesday Aug 26

by


Clara lived up to her old
traits, After what a strenuous
effort to see her safely off
to the station when she went
to the country & she does not
write me.

Well, she don’t interest me
anyway.

Excused myself on phone before
the unknown girl that on account of
a cold I could not keep appointment

—————-

Matt’s Notes

Boy, Clara II really gets under Papa’s skin. To review, Clara II (so nicknamed to distinguish her from Papa’s sister Clara) is a distant cousin on whom Papa’s had a crush for a while. She likes to have him around to flatter and do favors for her, but she obviously doesn’t plan to get romantically involved with him.

For example, as Papa mentions above, the other day she convinced him to help her to the train station as she left for for a Jewish country retreat in Spring Valley, and afterwards he wrote of the “disappointment” and “humiliation” he felt because she’d manipulated him through “trickery.” He received a card from her a couple of days later but insisted he was “indifferent to her.” And today he continues to protest too much: She’s obviously been on his mind enough for him to write an unprompted diary entry about her letter-writing negligence, but he insists she “don’t interest” him.

I wonder if his uncharacteristic use of improper grammar indicates how distracted and angry Clara II makes him, or if he’s trying out some stern-sounding slang for effect, or if he just made a mistake. I also wonder if he called in sick to his blind date because he was really sick or if his irritation with Clara II — which, again, was strong enough to surface in his diary out of the blue — made him too grouchy to deal with an “unknown girl.”

—————-

Additional Note

I added this as an update to my August 16th post, but I’ll mention it a few more times for those keeping score: Clara II might not be Clara Breindel (on of the cousins Papa temporarily shared a bed with when he first came to America) as I’d originally thought. I think she actually might be “Clara the daughter of Cousin Leizer,” a.k.a. “Clara Leizers,” who Papa met shortly after she came over from the old country back in January. Seven months would certainly have given them enough time to establish their patterns of flirtation and frustration, especially considering how quickly and completely Papa could become absorbed with women he found attractive.

Wednesday Aug 27

by

[no entry]

————–

Nothing from Papa today, so I thought I’d share this photo of him, in which he seems to be a little older than in his photos from the early 1920’s. It looks like it was taken in a photo booth, perhaps on the Coney Island boardwalk, some time around 1930. Had he already met my grandmother? Had he, at this point, finally overcome the forces of stasis and dispatched the unfulfilled longing he suffered from and wrote about in 1924?

———

And here are some notable New York Times headlines that might have caught Papa’s eye on this day:

  • Henry Ford Defends Klan As a Body of Patriots

  • Ohio Democrats Denounce the Ku Klux Klan, Putting Davis’s Statement Into Their Platform
  • COOLIDGE STUDIES KU KLUX KLAN ISSUE; President Reads Many Letters to Him Giving Various Views on the Klan.
  • Flier Going 105 Miles an Hour Broadcasts to Nassau County — Looks like radio communication from a moving airplane was still a novelty in 1924.
  • RADIO CONFERENCE CALLED BY HOOVER; Better Regulation of Wireless to Be Discussed — Public to Be Represented. — The explosive popularity of radio, and the crowding of the airwaves, demanded some kind of government action. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce and a friend of big business (as was his boss, President Coolidge) was loathe to regulate anything but called a bunch of conferences to ask broadcasters, many of them large corporations, how they’d like to regulate themselves. Not surprisingly and despite Hoover’s occasional rhetoric to the contrary, commercialism and the influence of corporations dictated the development of the broadcasting industry during this period.
  • ASSAILS ALIENISTS OF FRANKS SLAYERS; Prosecutor, in Last Argument, Scores ‘Twaddle’ of the ‘Three Wise Men of the East.’ — The Leopold and Loeb trial was wrapping up. In his summation, defense attorney Clarence Darrow had made an eloquent plea to save his clients from the death penalty. Prosecuting attorney Robert E. Crowe now attempted to counter Darrow’s arguments, and ridicule the psychologists who helped support them, in a strident, passionate speech. Darrow prevailed, and Leopold and Loeb were sentenced to life in prison plus 99 years.

Thursday Aug 28

by


Had another little meeting
at the order S.O.Z. offices
rehearsing the rituals

—————-

“Order S.O.Z.” stands for “Order Sons of Zion,” a.k.a. B’nai Zion, the Zionist fraternal organization Papa belonged to.

It’s slightly unusual for him to refer to the parent organization or mention a visit to its 23rd street offices; most of his B’nai Zion activities revolved around “The Maccabean,” as his Lower East Side chapter, or “camp,” was nicknamed. He was his camp’s Master of Ceremonies, though, so it looks like he had to attend occasional refresher courses in fraternal ritual (like the initiation rite he conducted a few days ago to swear in a new member with the fantastic name of “Treskinoff.”)

Papa’s Diary Map

———————

Note: I’m having some trouble finding out exactly what kind of rituals B’nai Zion might have conducted in the 20’s, so if you, dear reader, know anything more about this kind of thing, please send a note or drop a comment.

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