Saturday May 3

by


Suffered this morning an una-
voidable pain having tooth extract-
ted.

Went to dance of 2nd Zionist
dance at Webster Hall, I sat
in a rather sad mood but
later in the evening I have
been introduced to a girl
who was with me to the end,
She trusted me to implicitly

She is to much of a plain girl
But I’ve made with her two
appointments, I will relieve
a little of my loneliness, She
is a pretty girl.

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Matt’s Notes

Papa never seems to like the women he meets at Webster Hall (he went to a Zionist ball there earlier in the year and got turned off by the “wild women” and “jazz babies” in attendance) though I’m not sure how he could have enjoyed himself at all on this day after having a tooth pulled. (What was it like for him to get dental work done. Did he find a dentist through his union or one of his immigrant support societies? Did he get his tooth pulled in the living room of someone’s apartment, in a clean, well-lit office, or did he have to wait hours in a clinic filled with other people from the neighborhood? I’m stuck on the image of Papa sitting in a chair with his tooth tied to a doorknob by a length of string, but I imagine facilities were a little more sophisticated back then.)

This entry again shows us that Papa’s bouts of extraordinary loneliness (yesterday’s mediation on solitude was one of his saddest) were due not to any sort of social isolation but rather to something more deeply rooted and, alas, not as easy to get rid of as a bad tooth. Even his evaluation of the woman he met at Webster Hall feels muddy and conflicted: She’s both plain and pretty; she’s trusts him, but “to implicitly”; he doesn’t really like her but makes two dates with her anyway. Such ambivalence is, of course, not uncommon for single young men. His ongoing pattern of dating and dissatisfaction would almost be fodder for a good light comedy if only we didn’t know how privately pained he was.

I remember now that I once took a quick look at Papa’s diary when I was in college and saw one or two passages about his intense loneliness, how his sense of isolation resisted, persisted amidst, the bustle of life in 1920’s New York. I also remember thinking I knew how it felt, and for that reason I needed to revisit the diary one day. Now, when I read his saddest passages, I feel the urge to send him notes from his future to tell him everything turned out okay. Did I think his diary was a note from my future when I read it years ago? Do I still?

Sunday May 4

by

Attended games at Polo
grounds, and after that attended Maccabean
meeting at Pennsylvania
Hotel.

I am glad to notice
that my beloved camp
is progressing even if
slowly, at every meeting
it is my pleasant duty
to initiate new members.

Our meeting was visited
by guests of various O.B.Z.
camps in the city.

————–

Matt’s Notes

I enjoy the ironic, playful tone of the New York Times’ baseball writing from Papa’s day, but I think the anonymous New York Giants beat writer is my favorite. Here’s how he (presumably not she) opens his account of the double header Papa saw:

If 42,000 persons had not been present it would be kinder to say nothing about what happened at the Polo Grounds yesterday. But by this time it is no secret that the Giants brutally assaulted the hapless and helpless Phillies, winning both ends of the Sunday double-header, 13 to 3 and 12 to 3. Not all of the 42,000 saw the massacre through, for some were faint-hearted and others wanted to get home while there was still daylight enough to find their way there.

He goes on to wonder why anyone would see the Phillies in the first place, “even though they were twice offered for sacrifice at the nominal price of $1.10.” This serves as a great example of the resourcefulness required of baseball writers to say essentially the same thing 154 times a year (the length of the season in 1924) and also answers my question of what Papa paid for tickets. The Polo Grounds would have had over 10,000 empty seats that day, but I think this photo of the more crowded stands on opening day of 1923 still gives us a good idea of what the field looked like from Papa’s point of view:

polo grounds

I also continue to be amazed at how quickly baseball games were played back then. The double header described above wrapped up in four hours (yesterday’s Yankees double header took 6) allowing Papa plenty of time to hop on the IRT at 155th Street, head down to Penn Station, and make his “Maccabean” meeting at the Hotel Pennsylvania.

“Maccabean,” as noted before, refers to Papa’s chapter of the Zionist mutual aid society B’nai Zion. It looks like the meeting he attended was larger than usual and included members of other B’nai Zion camps (it must have taken place in one of the Pennsylvania’s private dining rooms) because it was an induction ceremony for new members. Papa would have run the meeting and conducted the initiation rituals in his capacity as Master of Ceremonies.

On minor quirk in this entry is Papa’s use of the initials “O.B.Z” to refer to B’nai Zion. This must be an inadvertent conflation of the group’s Hebrew (B’nai Zion) and English (Order Sons of Zion) names, unless I’m reading his handwriting wrong:

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Additional Notes:

The Jewish Daily Forward, descendant of the venerable Yiddish daily that Papa most certainly read in his youth, published a story about Papa’s Diary Project in this week’s English language issue. It’s called “Dear Diary: Back in Time” and you can read it here.

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References:

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Image source:

Opening Day, Polo Ground, 4.26/1923. Library of Congress #LC-B2- 5982-1

Monday May 5

by


Stopped from work at
Zionist Hdqtrs. to attend
to some publicity for the camp
in the Zionist publications.

Attended in evening,
East Side K.H. meeting,
which awakened my interest
to be more active in the cause
that is so dear to me.

I visted friend W. at store
All my credit to him for his
success in business, which is
such a thriving one due to
his ability. If I had
enough money now I’d accomplish
something I sincerely believe.

——————–

Matt’s Notes

Like so many New Yorkers before and after him, Papa worked a day job, attended to his more heartfelt pursuits in the evening, and counted a good night’s sleep among his lower priorities. Since this is so typical, and also because Papa rarely mentions work in his diary, it hasn’t yet occurred to me to ask what his working hours were actually were.

I think the eight-hour work day was established for garment factory workers by 1924, so Papa may well have knocked off at four or five o’clock. (I’ll have to look into this more, but even if the eight-hour day wasn’t official, I’m sure Papa’s factory, which still recognized May Day as a worker’s holiday, hewed to progressive union rules.) This would have given him a decent amount of time to attend to his evening responsibilities, though it still would have been a bit of a scramble.

The “headquarters” he visited were likely the Zionist Organization of America offices at 114 Fifth Avenue (at 16th Street) and the “publicity” he attended to was probably some kind of writeup about his chapter of the Zionist fraternal organization B’nai Zion (an announcement about the initiation ceremony he presided over the day before?) for Dos Yiddishe Folk, the Z.O.A.’s weekly publication. It’s possible that “headquarters” also meant B’nai Zion’s main office at 44 East 23rd Street, but in any event they likely ran all their publicity through the Z.O.A. since they were originally a Z.O.A. spinoff.

So, you might ask, in light of all his running around and hard work, how could he attend a meeting of Keren Hayesod (a Zionist fundraising group) and come away thinking he wasn’t doing enough for his cause? It’s hard for me to answer objectively since I never think I do enough of whatever I do and pretty much motivate myself entirely be being dissatisfied with what I have; I can only assume Papa had the same feelings as a young man and, perhaps, passed the trait down to me. In fact, I need to wrap up this post right now because I have to be somewhere, and I’m entirely sure this post is abysmally incomplete. (Watch for me, stomping down the street in a shitty mood, in about five minutes).

Here are the questions I still wish I’d written about:

  • Why did Papa refer to his friend “W.” only by his first initial? Did he not want to bring the evil eye on his successful business?
  • What does Papa think he’d accomplish with more money? Help the Zionist cause? Run for office? Give more to charity?
  • When did Papa learn to judge his life on what he had rather than on some abstract sense that he was supposed to be doing something else, something more, something different? And when will I, for God’s sake?

Tuesday May 6

by


Movie at Academy of Music

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Matt’s Notes

As we’ve discussed before, the Academy of Music was a storied venue that had fallen on hard times by the time Papa went there to see movies.

Once the home of New York Opera, and therefore the very seat of Knickerbocker society, it’s primacy came to an end at the hands of William H. Vanderbilt. Some time around 1880 Vanderbilt, who was considered nouveau riche by the standards of Knickerbocker society, was so incensed by the unavailability of boxes at the Academy that he simply decided to build his own opera house. Other like-minded millionaires jumped on board, and by May of 1883 their project, the old Metropolitan Opera House on 39th and Broadway, was in business.1

The Academy, having remained on top for forty years since its 1849 opening, took another forty to expire from Vanderbilt’s vengeful blow. Its popularity (and box seats) were gone by the late 1800’s, and bit by bit it conceded to host lower-brow attractions like wrestling, musical theater, and, finally, movies. The wrecking ball ended its misery in 1926, when the Consolidated Gas Company knocked it down and built new corporate headquarters in its place (the Con Ed building still stands in the same spot at 14th and Irving).

Did Papa know the Academy had but two years of life remaining when he wrote the above entry? We can’t be sure, but we do know he most certainly didn’t see any of that week’s first-run movies like Men, with Pola Negri, or Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, with Mary Pickford. The Academy wasn’t considered an important enough venue to make the New York Times listings, but it probably showed movies that had been hanging around town for a few weeks, like “The Thief of Bagdad,” “America,” “Three Weeks” or “Beau Brummel.” (While searching the Times archive I did come across a couple of enjoyable feature stories about the sorry state of subtitle writing and Hollywood’s lack of good scripts, complaints that persist today in movie journalism. Check them out if you’re a movie fan.)

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References

1 – As noted by Irving Kolodin in his History of the Metropolitan Opera 1883-1950:

Few of us today could imagine a society in which a mere whim could determine the existence of such a structure as the Metropolitan. Lilli Lehmann has recorded the circumstances in her memoirs, My Path through Life (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons; 1914): “As, on a particular evening, one of the millionairesses did not receive the box in which she intended to shine because another woman had anticipated her, the husband of the former [Vanderbilt] took prompt action and caused the Metropolitan Opera House to rise.”

Wednesday May 7

by


Stopped this morning long enough
to bid Bon Voyage to our leader
Weitzman, The scene was a very
impressive one as the huge ship
moved out slowly.

In evening had Miss B. out
for a bus ride it was pleasant.

—————-

Matt’s Notes

The ship Papa saw off that morning was the Aquitania, the pride of the Cunard line in the early 20th Century (other Cunard ships included the Mauretania and the ill-fated Lusitania). Noted for her great size and opulent interiors, the Aquitania was the last of the “four-stackers” and a favorite among movie stars and aristocrats in the 20’s, so the sight of her leaving New York harbor would have been as impressive as her passenger list.

Among those on board with Chaim Weitzman were Ogden Reid, who had bought the New York Herald to create the Herald-Tribune just six weeks before, and Prince Felix Youssoupoff, flamboyant husband of Princess Irina of Russia, the niece of Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II. According to the New York Times, the Prince had been in America to sell off a “large collection of jewelry” while Weizmann “carried with him approximately $5,000,000 raised in the United States for the restoration of Palestine.” It might have been a tad awkward if Youssoupoff and Weizmann ran into each other on the Aquitania, since Youssoupoff had been a key member of Nicholas II’s brutally anti-Semitic court (so much so that he participated in the murder of Rasputin). Hopefully the cruise director sat them at different dinner tables.

Papa, of course, knew not of the Aquitania‘s luxurious dining rooms and lounges, so while his “leader” was sailing to England, Papa contented himself with a social cruise on one of New York City’s buses. We’ve seen romantic episodes unfold for Papa aboard trolleys and trains, so perhaps he thought a bus ride with “Miss B.” on a lovely, 65-degree day would have been just the thing (this is his first mention of her, so I wonder if she’s the woman he met at a Zionist ball a few days before). Was this a typical way for people like Papa to get acquainted? What bus would they have taken?

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References

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Image sources:

Thursday May 8

by

Again a marriage broker
tried to induce me to get
hitched up. He gave me
the phone numbers to some
fair maidens. I shall try.

————–

Matt’s Notes

Since my wife Stephanie sings the entire soundtrack to Fiddler on the Roof at least once during any long car ride (and we take a long car ride at least once a week) it’s hard for me to read about Papa’s marriage broker and not have the song “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” running through my head.

As you’ll recall, Fiddler‘s Yente faced a challenge as a new generation of young people who preferred to choose their own mates threatened the importance of her profession. Papa’s matchmaker (that’s shatkhn in Yiddish, so if you know someone named Shatkin, chances are their Anglicized name reflects a matchmaking heritage in Eastern Europe) must have struggled with an even more difficult cultural moment, since young Jews in America — even those right from the old country like Papa — were learning to date, eat in restaurants, congregate, go out in public and dress like any other Americans.

Papa certainly displayed some old-school attitudes toward dating, as his formal letter of affection to the “20th Century Girl” proved, so I’m sure he wouldn’t have dismissed the efforts of the shatkhn. Still, we’ve seen him balk a bit at blind dates because (I think) his poetic heart demanded a romance with more dramatic, sincere origins, so he most likely pored through the shatkhn’s catalog with some reluctance. I think, too, his skeptical attitude comes through in his use of the term “hitched up” and the phrase “He gave me the phone numbers to some fair maidens,” making this just about the only entry to date in which Papa employed American vernacular or irony.

All in all I think we see, in this account of Papa’s grudging interaction with the shatkhn, a well-preserved example of how Lower East Side Jews of the 1920’s started to shift, in their attitudes and behavior, away from the old country and into the new.

Friday May 9

by


Home.

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Matt’s Notes

A slow evening at home for Papa; he probably listened to the radio and perused the day’s headlines. It looks like it was a slow news day, though a couple of New York Times stories that might have caught his eye included:

REPORT MEASURE FOR RADIO CONTROL; House Committee Bill Provides for the Application of Anti-Trust Laws. – A bill to create a Bureau of Radio in the Department of Commerce, with broad powers to regulate broadcasting and “the correction of evils that have grown up as the science has progressed” was introduced before Congress. Papa was an early adopter of radio (the commercial radio industry was all of two years old in 1924) and would have been keenly interested in any attempts to regulate broadcasting.

This article shared a page with story about how “Houdini, the conjuror” challenged a young man named Joaqin Maria Argamasilla to prove his claim that he could read through metal. He couldn’t.

SAY BRITAIN APPROVES TUNNEL UNDER CHANNEL; France Hears Project, Already Authorized There, Is Planned to Provide Employment. – Britain agreed to finish a tunnel to France started in 1883, the construction of which had been halted due to security concerns (among them the dangers of a poison gas attack). The tunnel opened in 1994.

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While Papa’s taking it easy, we might as well take a look at another of his photographic calling cards, or “cabinet cards,” from the 20’s. I like this one because it’s tinted and signed:

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And remember, if you’re just getting started with Papa’s Diary Project, here are a few good subjects to check out:

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