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.

Friday July 25

by


Had supper with Nettie
and all evening at home

———-

This is Papa’s second dinner in a row with his sister Nettie, which is slightly unusual but really only notable because he received news the day before of their family’s troubles in the old country. At first I figured Papa and Nettie might have talked about it the previous evening and gotten together again to continue their conversation, but on second thought I’d be kind of surprised if this was the case. Unless Nettie got her own distressing letter from Europe, Papa would have protected her from such worrisome news — with two sickly children and a husband who had trouble staying employed, she had problems of her own. (Papa had kept bad news from her before, most notably back in May when he decided not to tell her their father had died just after her son was born.)

So why two dinners in a row? Maybe Papa just felt the need to see Nettie a little more since the siblings he couldn’t visit were on his mind. Then again, I could be trying to dig too much out of this entry. They might have gotten together the second time for no real reason or because she happened to have some extra soup on the stove when he stopped by. Sometimes a dinner is just a nice dinner.

Saturday July 26

by


In an effort to kill a
monotonous day somehow
I went with Friend Weiner
& others to an Excursion given
by the Jewish National Workers Alliance

It seems that hard luck
falls on me everywhere, first
the reckless crowds and their
noisy wild shouting did not agree
with me, and to make the
day complete I lost a 10 dollar bill
or somebody stole it from my
pocket, I feel sorry but I had
some tougher luck in these my
trying days.

What will I do tomorrow?

————————-

Matt’s Notes

The Jewish National Worker’s Alliance sounds like the name of a labor union, but according to the 1923-1924 American Jewish Yearbook, it was a fraternal, social and support organization along the same lines and around the same size (6,100 members) as B’nai Zion (7,000 members) the fraternal order to which Papa belonged. Their office was at 228 East Broadway, just a few doors down from the Sniatyner Synagogue at 209 East Broadway, where Papa often worshipped. Here’s what an October, 2006 article from the Jewish Daily Forward has to say about them:

In Yiddish, farband means brotherhood and is also shorthand for the Yidisher Natsyonaler Arbeter-Farband (the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance), a labor Zionist fraternal order founded in the beginning of the 20th century. The Farband provided insurance and medical plans, and it also organized schools and Yiddish-cultural activities and participated in political affairs.

The Farband also built the Farband Houses, a cooperative housing development in the Bronx, and was closely aligned with Poale Zion, the far-left “labor Zionist” organization that saw Socialism and Zionism as inextricably linked. I may be butchering history here, but I think Poale Zion’s youth movement, Young Poale Zion, was also known as Zeire Zion. Papa didn’t much like Zeire Zion and even wrote a nasty article about them for Dos Yiddishe Folk, a weekly published by the more centrist Zionist Organization of America. His distaste for Zeire Zion probably would have compromised his Farband excursion even if the crowd hadn’t been intolerably reckless or a served as a haven for pickpockets.

I think Papa’s use of the word “monotonous” and the concluding question “What will I do tomorrow?” indicate more impatience with bachelorhood than with boredom. I would wager the “noisy wild” labor Zionists he spent the day with less raucous than they were young and carefree, irritating his lower-key, old-world sensibilities just as the “wild women” did at a Zionist ball back in January. Really, how wild could these people have been? Did they sing their labor songs too vigorously? Make too many sloppy speeches?

I think the scene “did not agree” with Papa because he was growing up fast and feeling the burden of his 29 years. He had suddenly become the de facto head of his family after his father died, and he was waking up to the inexorable passage of time and to the inevitability of life’s less savory surprises. As someone who had a good innate understanding of how important it was to concentrate on what he could do for himself and not on what he couldn’t control, he rarely lamented his “bad luck” or “hard luck” unless he felt as battered by circumstance as he seems to have on this day. (Still, it’s worth noting that he almost apologizes for seeing the loss of ten dollars as a sign of cosmic trickery when he says at the end of this entry “I feel sorry but I had some tougher luck in these my trying days.”) With such considerations afoot, it’s no wonder he got irritated among people who acted so cheerful and unburdened.

Sunday July 27

by


Again C.I.

I am so unhappy

I went to the C.I. Synagogue
to say Kadish

I always had the greatest
sympathy for those who
said Kadish

and now I am one of
those unfortunate

—————–

Sometimes I feel irrationally helpless when I look at Papa’s entries, as if I could relieve his unhappiness if only I tried hard enough. He seems to have tapped a new vein of sadness, too, recently remarking on his hard luck and boredom and constant worries. Even Coney Island, where he at least enjoyed the water and the breezes and the scenery once in a while, registers as little more than another place to mourn, as if its only attraction was a surreal, synagogue-themed simulacrum off the Boardwalk.

I have little more to say right now other than Papa, this is you:


I miss him today.

Monday July 28

by


Tough luck,

—————–

Matt’s Notes

Since we know how full and satisfying Papa’s life was in the end, we know he would eventually master the feelings of loneliness and displacement and sadness he felt so often when he wrote his 1924 diary. His capacity for joy and optimism and contentment, the signs of which we also see clearly in many of his entries, would win out and define him for those who knew him later.

We know, too, that this diary, with its details about his father’s death, is in part a long study of how he mastered the attendant feelings of (in his own words) “lost Paradise,” the final loss of his youth, and the understanding that he couldn’t go home again. Somewhere between its lines lie the clues as to how a young man like Papa — forced by circumstance from his native country, faced with the pressure of supporting his family back home, compelled to help support his sisters’ families in New York, depressed by the contrast between his idealistic image of how he wants his life to be and how it really is, and later faced with the suicide of his sister, the extermination of his European family by Nazis, and countless other trials — could become so whole and generous when he had every right to be embittered and selfish.

But still, even though we know 1924 was a year of tremendous change for Papa, even though we know the wisdom he acquired through his trials was essential to the evolution of his character, his diary is not a novel and does not have neat, clean turning points or moments of sudden revelation. He still had to live each day of the year, and he still had to go through long periods when his true character failed him and his sadness became bottomless, when he felt so helpless in the face of circumstance that he could sit down with pen in hand and, unable to see into the future, find nothing to say except “tough luck.”

Tuesday July 29

by


——————

Matt’s Notes

Ever since his father died back in May, Papa has shown a tendency to leave his diary pages blank when he’s feeling especially low. He’s shown a pronounced shift into such a mood over the last week or so, though I’m not sure whether something specific triggered it or whether it’s just part of the ebb and flow of mourning. (It does seem to have roughly coincided with his return to work after a forced three-week break, so even though he’s happy to be making money again, perhaps the monotony of factory work has given him a sense of inertia.)

Wednesday July 30

by


Had an Executive meeting
in my house (Camp)

I am saddened, I am
so much out of luck
What will be the end
I am keeping my hard
luck toughts from my friends
and from my sisters,

I am so heavily indebted
the prospect for the future
is not bright, and all
that is boring and ebbing
the life out of me.

—————

Matt’s Notes

I think the second-to-last line of this entry reads “that is boring and ebbing,” but I’m not quite sure I’m reading the word “boring” right. Here’s how it looks:

In any event, I suppose that’s a minor point considering everything else Papa has to say. I’ve wondered at times whether he confided in his friends or showed outward signs of worry during more trying times, but he answers that question today when he writes “I am keeping my hard luck thoughts from my friends and from my sisters.” I suppose his friends, especially those in “The Maccabean” (a chapter of the Zionist fraternal order B’nai Zion in which Papa was an officer) and his sisters looked to him for too much support, relied too much on his seemingly endless strength, for him to show them how overwhelmed he felt at times.

But could his friends and family really not know? In recent days Papa’s been struck anew by sadness over his father’s death, his financial woes, and the monotony of bachelorhood. He’s felt especially low. I wonder if he mentioned his efforts to keep his concerns under wraps today because he thought he might have inadvertently revealed them during the Maccabean meeting in his apartment. Did he feel like his spare furnishings, the big radio around which his private time revolved, the telephone he installed specifically to relieve his loneliness, were all physical evidence of the internal struggles he hoped to hide?

Whatever the reasons he brought it up today, we know now how alone he really was in his sorrow. He had no guidance but his own, no confidant but his diary, no one to tell him him “the prospect for the future” was, in fact, quite bright. It’s all the more remarkable, then, that he eventually found his way.

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