Friday July 18

by


Baseball game in afternoon
Radio at night

I am anxiously waiting for
next Monday when I will
resume work after a forced
vacation of 3 weeks, besides
being terrible doing nothing
I am also broke and I am
heavily indebted. My reso-
lution to save (from the 1st of
January) was so far a dream

Unexpected misfortunes
befell me simultaneously
and unexpectedly which
upset my earlier plans however
I’m hopeful for better times,

—————

Matt’s Notes

The Giants and Robins (a.k.a. Dodgers) were both on the road this day, so Papa must have seen the Yankees-Indians double-header at the Stadium. The Yankees split, losing 9-2 in the first game and winning 7-2 in the second, keeping the Yankees in a tight race for first with the Senators and surging Tigers.

The highlight of the day was an inside-the-park home run by Yankees slugger Bob Meusel (Babe Ruth must have walked a lot since he only recorded 5 at bats for both games) though for me, once again, the most impressive details in the box scores are the game times — both games clocked out at 2:05, meaning the Yankees banged out a double header in the time it takes modern-day American league teams to play a single prime-time game.

Papa might have even moved down to a better seat than he could usually afford since there were only 20,000 on hand at the Stadium, but it looks like he had weightier matters on his mind. He has felt especially pessimistic while he’s been out of work, and, as is often the case when one is low on money and self-esteem, even the prospect of working and earning again does little more than remind him of his debts and trigger reflections on the year’s difficult developments.

The “unexpected misfortune” most on his his mind is, of course, the relatively recent death of his father. This also led to his “heavily indebted” state since he had to take out a $100 loan to help his family in the old country with funeral and living expenses. Papa is sad enough to berate himself for not keeping his New Year’s resolution to save more money even though he said at the time he didn’t really believe in resolutions, and I’m sure he’s also running through a checklist of the year’s romantic disappointments and bouts of homesickness.

Sometimes when I read Papa’s words I feel, irrationally, like he’s deliberately written something just for me, and the last line of this entry, in which he says he’s “hopeful for better times,” seems like it’s there just to make me feel less sad for him as I write this on a dark, rainy morning. Better times did arrive for him, as we know, though I have no way to go back and say to him Papa, this is you:

———-

References:

YANKS BREAK EVEN AS PENNOCK WINS; Southpaw Takes Sixth in Row, Beating Indians in Second, 7-2 — Champions Lose Opener, 9-2. (From the July 19, 1924 New York Times.)

Image source: “Robert William Meusel, New York Yankees outfielder” taken in the 1920s. Library of Congress #LC-USZ62-127876. No known restrictions on publication.

Saturday July 19

by


Another empty day

I dared not even enjoy
at The Country mens affair
when a Torah was presented
to the Sniatyner Synagogue

The thought of my beloved
father (olam haba) kept me away
I went there but soon
left as I could not stand
the merriment.

—————–

What a difference a death makes. The last time Papa went to a “Country mens” affair (by this he means an event for people from his home town of Sniatyn, a.k.a. his “countrymen,” or landsmen in Yiddish) he described it as a “dream,” and he stayed up and wrote about it until four in the morning to hold onto the heady, happy buzz it gave him. And that was merely an annual dance; the presentation of a new Torah to his congregation should have been an even more intoxicating convergence of spiritual joy and fortifying thoughts of the old country.

Sadly, in the same way that, on the previous day, the prospect of earning more money only made him more conscious of his debts, the celebration at the Sniatyner synagogue reminded him, in yet another new and cruel way, that his dreams of home, of one day reuniting with his family, of somehow recapturing the “lost paradise” of his youth, died with his father back in May.

His fellow congregants probably danced in the halls of the schul and poured out onto East Broadway, singing Hebrew songs and crowding together as they did on Simchas Torah, just like they did in the old country. But Papa suspected the ritual would unsettle him, and like many such prophesies his was self-fulfilling. The Torah, a symbol of renewal and progress and hope, symbolized for Papa only the loss of his father, who had been a Torah scholar and teacher. The cheerful crush of his thronging landsmen, who celebrated not just a new Torah but their own freedom to demonstrate their faith on the streets of their adopted country, made Papa feel like he was at the center of a storm, brought home only the isolation he felt in New York, the trouble his mother and brother and sisters were in back in Europe.

Would he have felt guilty to share in the deep satisfaction he should have felt on this day? Did he feel like he didn’t have the right to be happy if his father was dead? Is that why he said he “dared not even enjoy” the presentation of the Torah? And what did he do when he left the synagogue? Did he wander around through Chinatown or up through the Lower East Side? Did he head back to his apartment to listen to the radio and pore over his photos from home? Did he take grim satisfaction in his detachment or did it strike him, in some small way, that the past was past, that Sniatyn no longer belonged to him, that his only chance at happiness was to build, at last, a brand new life for himself?

—————–

References

1 – As previously noted, the Congregation Sniatyner Agudath Achim gathered at a multi-use facility called Broadway Manor at 209 East Broadway between Clinton and Jefferson Streets. It’s now the location of the Primitive Christian Church.

Image Source: Image source: “Portrait of a ‘siyum ha-toyre’ (completion of the writing of a Torah scroll).” Courtesy of the Yivo Institue for Jewish Research’s People of a Thousand Towns site.

Sunday July 20

by

Bathing in C.I. with
my friends.

—

I wonder how some
people can enjoy real
happiness, no matter
how rich they are, if they
do not devote a part of
their lives to help other
human beings.

All humans are alike
and when death calls them
forth poor and rich alike
and they have to stand the
same suffering of death

Also I cannot conceive the
idea of some people being real
happy without a having a sense of under-
standing for classical music
which appeals to the very soul,
and other arts.

——————–

Matt’s Notes

I’m trying to imagine why Papa’s trip to Coney Island or what other recent events triggered this meditation on the nature of happiness. Certainly yesterday’s celebration of the new Torah at the Sniatyner Synagogue reminded Papa of his father, a religious teacher who schooled his students in the sacred, spiritual joys of altruism. Papa had also, on more than one occasion, looked upon large groups of happy people — in the movies, on the streets, during previous visits to Coney Island — and found himself wondering what, exactly, they were so pleased about.

Perhaps this day’s record crowd of 600,000 Sunday celebrants at Coney, so many of them smiling and laughing and frivolously splashing about, boggled Papa’s mind or clashed with the serious thoughts running through it from the previous day. Even his friends (and here I’m thinking of the rakish Rothblum) might have demonstrated too little seriousness and disturbed Papa’s mood. I wonder, too, if Papa was additionally frustrated with himself for not just relaxing and enjoying his day at the beach, making him feel even more self-absorbed detached.1

Regardless of what triggered it, I sort of like the strident, idealistic tone of this entry. It’s almost like the protestation of an undergraduate activist (“Dude, how can you sit there and eat cotton candy when people out there need help?”) especially since it switches subjects so suddenly from Death, the great equalizer, to a complaint about peoples’ taste in music (“Dude, if you don’t like this record you just don’t get it.”)

I don’t mean to say Papa’s feelings weren’t genuine, though. He maintained his devotion to idealistic pursuits — Zionism, the labor movement — long after most youthful enthusiasts put aside such things. He would, in fact, retire as a shop steward after a lifetime of union activism. I’m sure being a union rep in the garment industry wasn’t a storybook job, but I expect, whatever it entailed, he was happy to have devoted “at least a part of” his life “to help other human beings,” just as he had intended back in 1924.

————

1 – My own experience, most recently the office party I went to the other night, is interfering heavily here, I think.

——————

References

Monday July 21

by


I went this Eve. with a
struggling artist to help him
sell some pictures, I took
bought two myself, that
are now adorning my walls.

This is the first day when
I started to work again,
and I am happy about
it, I shall [be able to] pay out my
debts now.

———————–

Who was the anonymous “struggling artist” Papa assisted on this cool summer evening? A neighbor? An acquaintance from Zionist meetings? Papa had been visiting Coney Island a lot lately, so maybe he struck up a conversation with an artist who regularly showed on the Boardwalk, learned he lived on the Lower East Side, and promised to give him a hand some time. Or, more romantically, did Papa and his artist friend first meet at the Cafe Royale, gathering place for the Yiddish cognoscenti, and engage in a caffeinated conversation about the emerging “Hebrew” art movement in Palestine?

I’m also trying to imagine what kind of sales assistance Papa might have offered his friend. Did he help him lay out paintings on the sidewalk? Did Papa direct passers-by to his stand from down the block? Did he help guard his friend’s booth at some kind of annual street fair or art fair? And, I wonder, what sort of art would a struggling artist, presumably Jewish, have pursued in the 1920’s? What would Papa have purchased? A representation of the old country? Something more modern or experimental? Straight-up Judaica?

I don’t pretend to know much about art of the 1920’s, much less what was going on in the Jewish immigrant art community in New York, so I’ll need to look into it more. (Please drop a comment or write if you think you can help narrow down the infinite possibilities.) Still, it’s nice to see Papa treat himself to a couple of pictures now that he’s returned to work after a three-week, forced vacation. More burdensome that the debts he ran up to support his family in the wake of his father’s death has been his feeling that he doesn’t truly belong anywhere — he’s an unnaturalized guest in America and, with his father gone, he can no longer think of Sniatyn as his home. Maybe his urge to decorate his apartment a little signals some small waning in his sense of dislocation.

Tuesday July 22

by


Attended the farewell
dinner for Judge Strahl
who is leaving for Palestine
to install in Jerusalem the
Judea Insurance Co, given
by the Order sons of Zion,

Only in the midst of
idealists I find myself at home.

——————

Matt’s Notes

Judge Strahl was one of the most prominent leaders of Order Sons of Zion (B’nai Zion) the Zionist fraternal order and mutual support society Papa belonged to. Here’s what the 1917-1918 Jewish Communal register had to say about him:

Jacob S. Strahl was born in the New York in 1876, was educated in the New York Public and Hish Schools and received his degree of Bachelor of Laws from the New York Law School in 1897. He was elected Justice of the Municipal Court of the City of New York in 1909. Prior thereto, for nine years, he was associated with former New York Supreme Court Justice James A. Blanchard.

Judge Strahl has shown a great interest in Jewish work. He is the president of the Young Men’s Hebrew Association of Williamsburg, and the Nasi of the Order B’nai Zion.

Archived New York Times articles about Strahl attest to his reputation as a liberal judge, as does this 1920 reelection campaign postcard depicting him protecting two hapless tenants from an eviction-minded “rent profiteer.” It looks like his campaign methods got him in trouble with the Brooklyn Bar Association, though their campaign to discipline him for “conduct unbecoming an attorney” eventually came to naught. Strahl was no longer the Nasi of B’nai Zion in 1924 (“nasi” roughly translates from the Hebrew as “prince,” so I suppose B’nai Zion was no different from other fraternal organizations in its use of grand, archaic titles for its leaders) but he was on its executive committee and obviously one of its most active ambassadors.

Interestingly, the Judea Insurance Company he helped install in Palestine would, five years later, list as its Vice President none other than Vladimir Jabotinsky, one of Israel’s founding fathers. This was part of a larger development in which B’nai Zion threw its support behind Jabotinsky’s Revisionist Zionism Movement, an aggressive strain of Zionism that put Jabotinsky at odds with the Chaim Weizmann’s more moderate, centrist movement. This brings up some interesting questions about which brand of idealism Papa preferred — as of 1924 he seemed enamored of Weizmann, and as a pacifist he may not have liked Jabotinsky’s militarism. I’d love to know where he stood when B’nai Zion aligned with Jabotinsky, but we can only speculate.

—————-

References:

Wednesday July 23

by


I had supper with sister
Clara, and after a visit
to sister Nettie I spent
the rest of the eve. at home

——————-

For those of you just joining us, Clara and Nettie are two of Papa’s five sisters, and lived near his Attorney Street apartment on the Lower East Side. His other three sisters, Ettel, Gitel and Fule, plus his only brother, Isaac, still lived back in Papa’s Austro-Hungarian home town of Sniatyn.

Clara and Nettie never got along too well, so Papa rarely saw both of them at the same time even though they all lived near each other. Both sisters had relatively newborn babies for Papa to play with. Clara’s son, Julius, was born on May 28th, surprising Papa with his early arrival. Still, the circumstances surrounding the May 20th birth of Nettie’s son were far more unusual: When Papa wired home news of the birth, the response he received informed him that his own father had just died. Papa and Clara, now in mourning, kept the news from Nettie during her 10-day postpartum hospital stay. They didn’t even tell her the news when their mother requested that the baby be named Josele after their father, whose name was Joseph. (Jews traditionally don’t name their children after the living.)

Papa’s reputation among my family’s younger generations was stellar — he impressed us all with his gentle, comforting vibe, born in part, no doubt, of the genuine pleasure he felt to see his family well-established in his adopted country. Still, I wonder if Papa found it hard to be around Josele since he was tied so closely to Papa’s father’s death, or if, especially in 1924 when the wound was still raw, Papa’s behavior and countenance darkened ever so slightly when he visited Nettie.

————–

My mother adds:

I think Papa was able to keep these things separate. He loved all his nieces and nephews very much, and was very devoted to Aunt Nettie, especially since she had such an unhappy life.

I never saw his face darken, except for the bad news during and after WW2 and anything unfavorable to Israel.

Thursday July 24

by


Had supper with Sister
Nettie,

Received another bad letter
form home, eternal strife
among the children at home

I am so worried, what
can I do? My aim to bring
my mother & Fule here seems
hopeless, unless I can manage
to get naturalized early, but
the hopes are very slim, however
I’m hopeful.

In the meantime the
constant worrying is having
its effect on me, it weakens
me I think I have super-
strength when I can stand
all these worries.

——————-

Matt’s Notes

I speculated on why Papa’s naturalization status might be on his mind when he first mentioned in a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t realize its practical effect on his efforts to bring his family over from the old country. I’m sure he would have encountered many other obstacles even if he was naturalized (Would he have enough money? Could his mother handle the trip?) but the opaque bureaucracy holding up his Petition for Naturalization obviously felt the most impenetrable. Was Papa so focused on it because there was some sort of loophole for relatives of naturalized immigrants in the recently-strengthened immigration quota laws?

Papa never would get his mother, sister Fule or any of his other siblings out of Sniatyn, though Fule eventually made her way into the world at large through a series of marriages and adventures. (She went to Palestine after her Viennese husband just before World War II. Upon her arrival, she married a near stranger on a boat just outside Palestinian waters so she could enter as the wife of a citizen. My mother tells me the family knew this second husband only as “Mr. Abramowitz.” He was, it seems, somehow related to David Sarnoff, the Russian-born broadcast innovator and RCA founder who I’ve read about while researching early radio history for this site.)

I’m sure the worrisome letter Papa refers to contained details of his family’s financial struggles and desperate requests for more money. As we’ve discussed before, he felt compelled to provide for them all after his father died — note how he refers to his siblings as “the children” here, as if he’s really taken on a patriarchal role. Papa was naturally generous and responsible, but I think he also took on his father’s role (and worries) in part because it helped keep his memory alive. Whatever the reasons, though, his concerns as an immigrant were personal, painful, typical and timeless.

⇐ Previous 7 Days|Next 7 Days ⇒