Papas Diary Project

Busy here and there
jumped in to [both] my sisters
for a moment.

I met again the good
girl at Malicks’s Rest.
and escorted her home

Certainly there are more
good ones but so rare

———

Matt’s Notes

I imagine the “good girl” is the same one Papa met at the Zeire Zion meeting the previous night, though whether he made a date with her or simply ran into her at Malick’s Restaurant is unclear. To escort her home was, I think, a gesture of intimacy for Papa (in a previous entry, he had unkind words for women who left a party with un-“gentlemanlike” men they’d just met) but he hardly seems smitten since barely mentions her before turning to speculation on what other women are out there.

I’m trying to figure out what Malick’s restaurant might have been like and what Papa would have eaten there. According to “New York Jews and Chinese Food: The Social Construction of an Ethnic Pattern” by Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine, Jewish restaurants never got much fancier than the “gourmet delicatessen with formica tables” (an ambivalence toward Diaspora food could be one reason why Lower East Side Jews wandered into nearby Chinatown for culinary solace) so Malick’s was probably a crowded little ground-floor eatery with pickles on its tiny tables and blintzes on its menu. More to come about this, I hope.

————–

Updates

2/6 – My mother adds:

I’ve tried to make the
mass meeting a success
my efforts brought a big
crowd, the speakers were
brilliant and the Cantor was
wonderful but got only
a handfull of members.
I have worked it all single-
handed, but — I am not
discouraged, I will carry on

After the meeting I
spend a pleasant hour
at Shulem’s in the company
of Ab. Goldberg, Dr. Schechter
and Mr. Graf.

——————

Papa had been worried about the success of this meeting, which was meant to revive a flagging chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, for a while. He’d considered giving up on his efforts if the meeting wasn’t well attended, but I’m sure only the sight of a completely empty room would have punctured his idealism that decisively. (To chase a dream in New York is to deny its folly. So it always was, so it shall ever be.)

Papa passed his “pleasant hour” at Sholem’s with Abraham Goldberg who, as mentioned before, was a prominent member of the Z.O.A. I don’t know who Dr. Schechter and Mr. Graf were (for a brief moment I wondered if Dr. Schechter could have been Solomon Schechter himself, but since Solomon died in 1909 it would have been decidedly unpleasant, not to mention illegal, to spend an hour in his company).

It surprised me to read about the cantor’s presence at Papa’s meeting, but I know I really shouldn’t be. I also know I’m going to be surprised by this kind of thing again and again in the course of this project. I think it’s due to my own lack of spiritual attachment to Judaism (or anything else). While I’m aware of religion’s effects on people’s politics and daily lives, I know no more about what it’s like to be a person guided by spiritualism than I know what it’s like to be a dolphin guided by sonar. Papa was an observant, learned Jew, he saw himself as one of the Children of Israel and, accordingly, saw Zionism as a way home for himself and for everyone he loved. Zionism was an extension of his Judaism, so why wouldn’t he arrange for a cantor to sing at a Zionist meeting? But still…

If I seem to be struggling with something obvious, it’s because I’m so different from Papa in this way. It’s food for thought: Part of the reason I’m doing this project is to comprehend, as an adult, those qualities in Papa that seemed so transcendent to me as a child. But certainly Papa’s spiritual beliefs were greatly responsible for that transcendence, for the warmth he exuded, for keeping him intact throughout the trials of his youth. Whatever I find of him in myself, then, has at least some of its roots in spiritualism. Yet I’ve inherited only the effects, not the cause; spiritualism created what psychology perpetuated. Maybe it’s just another face of assimilation.

Update 1/28

I think there’s a parallel between the process of religious tradition giving way to inherited behavior and the evolution of the Jewish fraternal system, which I’ve talked about in other posts. The fraternal system provided a formal way to let immigrants cement their relationships, through ritual, on American soil with people from their original countries; they could take comfort in their old traditions while starting to build new ones. As the immigrant communities developed more home-grown support systems and found support in their new country’s agencies (labor unions, government services, etc.) the importance of ritual and fraternal bonding lessened. What older generations sought through the fraternal system — security, a sense of responsibility to others, a feeling of mutual support — remained, but in another form. Subsequent generations still pursued the qualitative equivalent of what their forbears taught them to value, only in different ways; what one generation pursued through ritual, another perpetuated through more secular means. Isn’t this a bit like what I was saying above about how my grandfather’s admirable qualities — his diligence, his respectful nature, his generosity — inspired by the spiritual side of Judaism, might make it to subsequent generations in the absence of religious belief?

Reported to Blitz the result
of the meeting.

On my way home I bumped
into Mr. Novack of Coney Island,
he held me back for more then
an hour, trying to induce me
to join the P.D.C. and
telling me the whole story
(his version) of the Weitzman
Brandeis-Mack break.

I listened to all impatiently as
I was hungry and anxious
to get into some eating place.
However it was interesting
He certainly is an interesting
type, he found the wrong
customer for the P.D.C. I sympathize
with them but physical
and financial ability to join
them also.

————

Again the mysterious “Blitz” materializes. And then, poof, he’s gone.

The P.D.C. is, I think, the Palestinian Land Development Company, another Zionist organization devoted to purchasing land in Palestine. I like how Papa admits to being too hungry to listen to Novack’s speil. Did he shift around from foot to foot, glance down the street as if something caught his eye, remark on how crowded the sidewalk was, or say things like “well, anyway…” hoping that Novack would pick up on his impatience?

Novack probably couldn’t have been distracted if he was talking about the “Weizman Brandeis-Mack break.” (Chaim Weizman and Judge Louis Brandeis, the respective leaders of the European and American Zionist movements, differed on the management of investment in Palestine and fell out over Weizman’s establishment of Keren Hayesod in 1921.) It must have been a subject of passionate debate, so I’m sure the conversation would have lasted more than an hour if Papa hadn’t been so hungry.