Sunday July 13

by

Empty

——————

Matt’s Notes

The words Papa chooses for his dismissive diary entries — whether he writes “dull” or “not important” or “unimportant” or “empty,” as he does today — always strike me as pointed and loaded with hidden emotion. To sit down, take pen in hand, and write “empty,” as opposed to one of a thousand other ways he could have described his nondescript day, recalls his earlier, anxious discussions of his life’s “emptiness” and the loneliness he’s struggled with all year.

Papa is idle, on a long, forced break from work. He lacks the money to do much more than ride out to Coney Island every day and wander, by himself, among the happy, thronging couples. He remains without romantic companionship. But perhaps his most difficult struggle is with a new form of homesickness grown thick and tangled since his father’s death. He no longer experiences ordinary longing for the old country, but instead faces the yawning absence of what he hoped to recapture one day with his family. He is awakened, after eleven years, from the sweet dream of safety and belonging and ease made possible by the prospect, however remote, that he might see them all in one place again.

For those of us following Papa’s diary, the word “empty” is anything but empty. It is a one-word poem written in longing for some relief. It is really true, can we really believe, that what came later would make him forget what it meant to him in 1924?

It seems that way. Papa, this is you:

Monday July 14

by


Saw Clara this evening,
It seems that I lost my
interest in her as far as love
is concerned.

I visited today the new
place where I am going
to work, it’s a fine place
as long as I have still to work
for others this is not a bad
place, if the employer would
only realize my value and
raise my salary, I’d be more
content.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa seems to be well-acquainted with “Clara,” or at least he’s known her long enough to compare his past and present feelings about her, but I’m not sure who she is. She’s obviously not his sister Clara, nor do I think she’s the distressingly skinny woman he ran into back in April (“…on my way to work I met C. How different she looks now, She lost weight and looks bad”).

If Clara is a character from Papa’s diary, she could be the woman he met through a matchmaker on July 2nd and deemed “worthy of love.” If so, his lack of interest in her now doesn’t surprise me, since from the outset he saw her as an abstraction, an applicant with the right “qualifications” through whom he might end his “bachelor days,” but also an inaccessibly ideal representation of womanhood who might be too good-looking and refined for “a man of [his] nature.” Papa’s tendency to idealize women, only to be disappointed when they turned out to be flawed humans, is well-known to us by now. We also know this tendency toward idealization would, as Papa matured, mellow into a more useful capacity to see good things in people. I think this helped him cultivate the forgiving, gentle and comforting nature those of us who knew him found so striking.

Meanwhile, Papa has revealed for the first time that he’s going to be starting a new job shortly, which surprises me since he just got a $5 raise few months ago. Perhaps he’s just starting in a new factory owned by the same boss, or maybe his factory has moved to a new location. In any event, I’m trying to figure out how much Papa would have earned as a machine operator in the 1920’s; we know, thanks to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, that the going rate was around $15 a week in the in the early 1900’s and 1910’s. Even if Papa’s experience and labor affiliation had him earning a bit more than that, we get a good sense of how hard it must have been for him to live in New York and still send money back to the old country.

Tuesday July 15

by


Went with Jack Z. to arrange
with a lawyer about the
camp credit union.

I am alarmed not having
received any call yet
about my naturalization.

—————————-

Matt’s Notes

“Jack Z.” is, as we’ve noted before, the august Jack Zichlinsky, one of Papa’s best friends and a brother in the Zionist fraternal organization Order Sons of Zion (B’nai Zion). Immigrants like Papa were used to getting a number of financial, medical and legal services through private, dues-supported organizations like B’nai Zion, which was already a burial society and a reseller of life insurance for its members. As an officer of his local chapter Papa was obviously responsible for organizing its credit union as well.

Though he’s discussed B’nai Zion many times before, this entry has the first mention of Papa’s naturalization status. According to The National Archives and Ancestry.com Web sites, naturalization would have been a two-step process for Papa: after living in the U.S. for at least two years, he would have filed a Declaration of Intention to naturalize (a.k.a. “First Papers”) and after a waiting period of another three to five years he would have filed a Petition for Naturalization.

Ancestry.com’s New York County Supreme Court Naturalization Petition Index shows that Papa probably filed his petition in June of 1920. He’d been waiting a while for his naturalization, but I wonder why he picked July 15th, 1924 to feel especially worried about it. Maybe Jack Z.’s own naturalization has just come through and he’d discussed it with Papa while they were out and about, or maybe naturalization chatter had increased in the local community, in the newspapers, or on the radio for some reason. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, a bill that imposed heavy immigration restrictions on Eastern Europeans (among other groups) had also become law couple of months earlier — maybe Papa had just gotten around to worrying about it now since it happened around the time of his father’s death. In any event, I have to look into this more.

—————————–

Additional References

Wednesday July 16

by


Had just a little outing
tonight with friends in C.I.

————–

Matt’s Notes

Papa and his friends probably didn’t go swimming on this casual evening excursion to Coney Island. They probably hopped on the ferry or a series of subways from Essex Street to the Brighton Beach line (temperatures were in the high 80’s during the day, so I bet they took the ferry to cool off) hit the Boardwalk, and spent the rest of the evening strolling, chatting, and perhaps noticing women, like these fellows on the left:

———————-

Audio Source: “Coming Home From Coney Isle,” a 1906 recording by Jones and Spencer via archive.org.

Thursday July 17

by


Maccabean meeting

—————

Matt’s Notes

“The Maccabean” was, as readers of Papa’s diary know, the nickname for his chapter (or camp) of the Zionist fraternal organization B’nai Zion, or Order Sons of Zion.

As we learned back in January, Papa lobbied for the nickname and had to fight for its acceptance, probably because its reference to the Maccabees, the ancient warrior heroes of the Hanukkah story, struck other chapter members as too warlike. Papa was a pacifist himself, but he also believed in challenging the racist perception of Jews as weak and submissive. He and his contemporaries promoted the image of the “muscle Jew” for practical reasons as well, since physical preparation was essential to survival in the rugged, unforgiving terrain of Palestine.

In any event, Papa had felt rather aimless and depressed while temporarily out of work during the garment industry’s slack season, so I hope the chance to meet with his B’nai Zion compadres and do some work for his beloved Zionist cause relieved a bit his malaise.

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.

⇐ Previous 7 Days|Next 7 Days ⇒