Monday Sept 29

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1st. day R.H.

————

I walked with Jack to the Brooklyn Bridge for Tashlik. Mrs. Kessler gave me crusts for my pocket, her husband is so sick he cannot go himself. I felt the warmth from her stove as she opened the door and handed me the crusts, saw inside the candles and table set for tonight. She is a good wife but so tired and quiet, I did not expect her to open her door and offer me bread when I walked down the hall but so she did.

I joined a little stream of neighbors, and there we joined other streams from other streets and more still until we flowed to the base of the bridge, a little river of Jews from all over down town. I saw there a girl I recognized from the Kessler club, always she holds a cigarette and wears short skirts and laughs at every boys joke, but now she walked quietly another part of our solemn parade.

The women and the men walked on the bridge together and I thought of Tashlikh in my little town of Sniatyn. How I would follow the men to the Prut and listen to my father’s voice as he explained the rituals, how the women could see us from the bend in the river where they stood, apart from us, I imagined I could see the crumbs they cast float down stream and past us as the men read from their prayer books. My father olam habah held my hand on the way back, his book tucked under his good arm so he could take my hand in his, his feet crunching the fallen leaves and I walked so fast to stay beside him, the cool air made my nose run and I saw the other men around us walking, dark coats amidst the trees, asking questions of my father asking questions I would not have thought of myself. My father always answering and I would hold his hand.
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Image courtesy of the Yivo Institute’s People of a Thousand Towns site
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Tuesday Sept 30

by


2nd day
Visited Mr. Surduts home
this evening, and then
went to a meeting of the
C.I. Talmud Torah

Interesting but it tired
me out so.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

“2nd day” refers to the second day of Rosh Hashanah, a.k.a. the Jewish New Year, one of several major milestones clustered on the Jewish calendar in early fall. As I’ve noted over the past few days, Papa would have taken this holiday’s focus on repentance, renewal and self-evaluation quite seriously, and today he demonstrates his religious state of mind by riding all the way out to Sea Breeze Avenue in Coney Island for Torah study.1 (I expect he developed his connection to the Coney Island Talmud Torah during the summer, when he would frequently visit Coney Island with friends but take leave in the evenings to say Kaddish for his father in the Coney Island Synagogue.)

As we’ve also noted, these were the first High Holy Days Papa would observe since his father died back in May. His diary entries over the past few weeks have been either non-existent or cursory, indicating, I think, how emotionally overwhelmed he now feels, all his homesickness and unhappiness amplified, mixed together, adding up to a feeling too exhausting to put in words. Remember, too, that Papa’s father was a Talmud Torah teacher himself, so Papa’s presence in a Talmud Torah would have brought forth an additional torrent of memories and emotions, probably surprising in their intensity and timing. (I can’t help but allow my personal experience to fuel this speculation; even eleven years after my own father’s death I find myself ambushed by, flooded with, unexpected feelings at inopportune times). No wonder his trip to Coney Island tired him out.

—————–

This entry contains the name of a person whose home Papa visited, but I can’t quite read it. It looks like “Mr Surdut,” but that doesn’t seem right. Any thoughts?

——————-

References:

1 – The 1919-1920 American Jewish Yearbook lists a Coney Island Talmud Torah on Sea Breeze Avenue. Subsequent editions of the Yearbook, including those covering 1924, cut their listings of local educational organizations way down, so I haven’t yet confirmed that the Coney Island Talmud Torah still existed at that location in 1924. Still, it seems like safe bet. The Ocean Parkway stop on the Brighton Beach BMT line (which seems to have evolved into today’s Q) was just a couple of blocks away.

Wednesday Oct 1

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As dull as ever

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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.

Thursday Oct 2

by

—————–

In my dream I am in the round schul and it is old and dark. The chairs and benches are bolted to the floor. Dirt and balls of dust gather around the bolts. I realize I have discussed the chairs before with my father. He told me they came from a subway car of an experimental type never used by the owners.

I walk along the wall some more and I see in the dark the figure of a woman. I imagine it is my mother but it doesn’t look like her. This woman is old and tiny and seems unwell. She tells me there is mud in her stomach. I tell her I will get my beloved father olam haba to help her and she tells me he is no longer inside the synagogue. I remember where the door is and then I am upon it, a small wooden door like the door to a house not very like the door to a synagogue at all.

Outside it is a bright spring day. I can’t see for the sun is in my eyes.

Soon I am walking the street in my town of Sniatyn. I know somehow my mother no longer lives in our house, she lives in one of the neighbors houses now. I remember the house but I have never been through the door. It is ordinary and painted white and I wonder how it will feel to be inside. As I walk to it my feet leave the ground, I float and drift in the air and soon I am above the roof tops. I know it will be easy to find my father if I fly and so I learn to move my arms and feet to turn this way and that, the houses pass beneath me faster and faster. I am beset by sadness because I never knew I could fly and I think about how different my life would be if only I had known.

Now I am afraid because I am going higher and I cannot stop myself. I see a big city now, across the river. I don’t why its there because Sniatyn is a small town with nothing around it but hills and the river. I feel a lurch and I begin to fall. It takes a long time but I am calm, I spin and tumble like I am under water. I wonder why I am not worried. I drift toward the city on my way down but I think I am going to fall into the river instead. This is a relief because if I land on the ground I might get hurt but the river is just water and will break my fall. I think I will be safe if I hold my breath.

Image Source: “Sniatyn. Rooftop view. Circa 1910.” from Zwierzanski Website. Original source unknown.

Friday Oct 3

by

Philip my brother in law
had a serious accident
his hands are wounded
and his children are not well,

Oh God help them get well
again

————–

As I’ve mentioned before, Papa’s sister Nettie seemed to suffer far more from the day-to-day indignities of Jewish immigrant life in New York’s tenements than Papa did, at least in 1924. Her children were sick and wracked with coughing fits; the joy of her son’s birth was compromised by a telegram from overseas announcing her father’s death; her husband, Philip, got pushed around by an opportunistic shyster posing as a teacher of English; and now Philip, already in and out of work, suffered an accident from which, I’ve been told, he never quite recovered.

Unfortunately, even as Papa constructed a more uplifting story for himself in subsequent years, Nettie’s life continued to describe a tragic arc. Her daughter, Ruchale, would die of meningitis and Nettie would eventually conclude a long struggle with mental illness by taking her own life. Her sadness was of a very different sort than Papa’s, incurable, bleak; I wonder if, in subsequent years, Papa contrasted his own life to hers and felt, through his empathetic sadness, somehow thankful.

Saturday Oct 4

by


3rd dist

—————

“3rd dist” refers to the Third District, or chapter, of the Zionist Organization of America, which at the time encompassed Haddassah (the famed Jewish womens’ organization) and B’nai Zion (the fraternal order and mutual support society to which Papa belonged).

Papa worked hard for the Z.O.A., especially earlier in the year when he attempted to revive its moribund First District at the behest of a mysterious supervisor named “Blitz.” I don’t think these efforts were successful, though; in recent months he’s attended a few Third District meetings and one Second District meeting, but he hasn’t mentioned the First at all.

Meanwhile, Papa continues to write short, abbreviated passages in a spidery hand, as if some long struggle left him unable to do more than scratch out a few letters. I think this is because the anticipation of Yom Kippur, during which Papa will have to mourn his recently-departed father for the first time, weighs heavily on him. Whether he knows it or not, he is embroiled in a dramatic internal struggle to understand his place in a world without his father and all his father represented. It is probably too much for him to write or think clearly about, but it dwarfs his other concerns.

Sunday Oct 5

by

3rd dist & Cafe Royal

————

I watched as Blitz engaged in a tremendous argument with Goldstein about Jabotinsky. Goldstein has grown impatient with Weizmann and upon learning of the Third District meeting commenced to insult our efforts. Blitz is passionate and slapped his palms on the table and my coffee danced and splashed in its saucer from one side to the other.

Just a small turn of my head and instead of the Blitz and Goldstein argument I could watch three actors from one of the theaters down the street, chairs pressed together on one side of their table, they leaned against each other and sang and smiled. They still had makeup on their faces and had the appearance of movie actors. One of them looked my way as he sang, his beard was black and his hand lay on a newspaper in front of him. He had small eyes, black and shiny, he did not seem to notice me but he sang the old song and knew every word and continued to sing even has his friends faltered and laughed and toasted with glasses of tea. I urgently wanted to join him at his table and also to get up and leave the restaurant, nervous now as if I’d just remembered something, or remembered I’d forgotten to do something like turn off the gas at home or bring Josele his medicine.

Blitz tugged on my arm and asked me to add my opinion to his discussion with Goldstein but I had forgotten what it was about and the man with the beard stopped singing and I knew if I tried to talk I would have choked on my words and wept. My coffee was half spilled now from Blitz’s exertions but I drank it all the same and happily I was able to swallow.

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