Thursday May 22

by

I have decided to send
home at once $50, $30 for a
tombstone and 20d. to live
for a few weeks, I will
Endeavor to get a loan
of a 100d. and leave $50
for myself to live on as there
is a slack season ahead.

My many worries are
slowly ebbing the strength
out of me

Is this an inheritance of
my father who throughout his
life worried fighting for his
and his familys very existence

——————–

Matt’s Notes

Just yesterday, the chance to shoulder his family’s financial burdens seemed like the best way for Papa to fight his deep, absorbing grief over his father’s death. As might be expected under such emotionally trying times, his feelings now swing the other way as practical worries about his own precarious finances blur his perspective on the benefits of self-sacrifice.

Something else is going on here, too. As his feelings about financial charity oscillate between resolve and apprehension, so, too does he experience the up and down side of his wish to be like his father. I think Papa hopes to keep his father close by emulating his steadiness and resolve and by stepping into the role of family provider. In effect, he keeps his father with him by trying to become him.

With this, though, comes a down side, and Papa seems overwhelmed by its discovery and the attendant questions: If I am like my father, am I not like him in every way? If I am charitable, wise, and tenacious, am I not also burdened, struggling, prone to exhaustion? (Remember that Papa’s father was, in Papa’s own words, “a cripple” with a paralyzed arm who must have demonstrated many moments of “ebbing” strength throughout Papa’s life.) I don’t think it’s unusual for people to ask such questions of themselves, but it must have been difficult, even shocking, for Papa, an idealist who idealized his father, to contemplate the unexpected complexities of his legacy.

—————

A sad(der) footnote to this post: When the Nazis occupied Sniatyn during World War II, they made the Jewish residents of the town pull headstones out of the Jewish cemetery and lay them down as paving stones in front of Nazi headquarters. The headstones are still there today. Is the tombstone my grandfather mentions above, the tombstone he went into debt to pay for, included among them? Does every one of the tombstones in Sniatyn have a story like my grandfather’s behind it?

————

Update 6/9

Reader Aviva sent this link to an article in The Guardian about a snapshot of a Nazi execution in Sniatyn.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1131825,00.html

I wonder if my grandfather ever saw this picture. He almost certainly knew the people in it. They may well be members of his family, and mine.

Friday May 23

by

In these my darkest
days, to relieve my
monotony, the Kempel
boy from next door, sleeps
with me nightly in my
rooms.

There can be no greater
devotion from a father than
that of my own whom I lost
He showed me the right
path of life, how to help fellow
humans and the mental
satisfaction we get out of it
He was the wisest of the men
in Israel,

Had he lived in Israels prime
he would have been an out-
standing figure

————–

Matt’s Notes

The pendulum swings the other way. Yesterday Papa questioned whether his father’s capacity for caring and tenacity was really just a propensity for worry and endless struggle; he wondered, in a dark moment, whether his beloved father’s legacy was a blessing or a curse. Today, as if to make up for this lapse, Papa casts his father in almost biblical terms, compares him to the wisest men of Israel and extols his superhuman devotion.

In the emotional crucible of mourning, people indulge themselves in all sorts of behavior because they are allowed to and cannot help themselves. This behavior, the face revealed when all defenses are down, tells a lot about about the mourner’s true character, and, when someone has lost a parent like Papa just had, even more about the mourner’s inheritance. So we ask: How will he pay tribute? What has he learned from the parent? Will he act selfish? Caring? Helpless? Furious? In Papa’s case, the thread running through his mourning tribute is devotion to his father’s belief in altruism, the power and resiliency people get from helping “other humans.” He does not waver on this principle, and it keeps him steady, as it would for the rest of his life, even though it did not necessarily prevent him from struggling with bouts of sadness.

Speaking of sadness, I think Papa’s description of how the “Kempel boy from next door” slept in his room during this period may be one of the most difficult, deeply sad moments in Papa’s diary thus far. Papa has demonstrated on many occasions his tendency to get deeply depressed and feel hopelessly lonely when alone in his rooms. I think this depressing loneliness was rooted, to a great extent, in his chronic, incurable homesickness, and it must have become nearly unbearable in the wake of his father’s death. And while I’m sure the Kempel boy was happy to stay in Papa’s apartment (his parents must have offered since the boy probably shared a bed with half his family under normal circumstances) the thought of Papa resorting to a child’s company for want of any other solace is so melancholy it practically defies description.

Saturday May 24

by


5 P.M.

After morning prayers
at the synagogue I spent the
afternoon at home, assembling
the precious letters from my
father Olam Haba.

I shall make a little shrine
and worship in his memory.

—————–

Matt’s Notes

It must have taken Papa the whole day to go through eleven years worth of letters from his father, opening, reading, refolding, pausing between each for long silent stretches, blinking away tears, walking around the block. He would have handled them carefully, gingerly, as if they could break apart in his shaking hands.

And what would the “little shrine” to his father have looked like? I picture a stack of letters on Papa’s mantle or dresser, flanked with a candle or two, and, propped just behind them, the ceramic-mounted, oval photograph of his father and mother now in my possession:

I have a couple of other thoughts when I read this entry. One, totally selfish, is: God, I’d love to have those letters. The other is: What would Papa’s shrine to his father have looked like if this story took place today? Would he have scanned the letters, posted them to a Web site, and written a little thought about each one?

————————

Note that Papa once again uses an abbreviation of the Hebrew expression Olam Haba in this entry. As noted before, this literally means “the world to come,” and Papa uses it in reference to his father to say “I’ll meet him in heaven.”

Sunday May 25

by


Visited Rifke Mauale
Schechter & Kessler Club
& Rosenstock in E. N.Y.
& Eva at Hospital. —

Thus I am spending my
sad days.

I am off next week how
will I kill the time?

—————-

Matt’s Notes

We haven’t seen any of the people mentioned above before, though Papa did discus the Kessler Zion club back in January when he went to the installation ceremony for its new officers (it was probably a Zionist fraternal society like B’nai Zion, the organization to which Papa belonged). I don’t know much else about the club, but I expect it was located out in Brooklyn since Papa’s Kessler Zion visits usually coincided with trips to said borough of Kings.

Papa’s upcoming week off couldn’t have been more unwelcome. To lose a week’s pay when he needed to send more money home in the wake of his father’s death was bad enough, but even worse was the prospect of idleness. Papa was already inclined to get depressed when he was by himself on weekends or after work, and after his father died he found his bachelor pad so intolerable that he invited his neighbor’s son to stay with him at night. Sadness waited to burst upon him at every free moment; the “vacation” stretching out before him must have looked as desolate and dangerous as a minefield on the Western Front.

Monday May 26

by


Eventless day, in afternoon
visited friends, and the
Zionist office, wrote there
an article for Dos (?) Yidishe Folk
critisizing the Z.Z.

Every morn. & eve, includes
now prayer service at the
synagogue with Kadish

————-

Matt’s Notes

The newspaper Papa refers to above, Dos Yiddishe Folk (The Jewish Nation) was an organ of the Zionist Organization of America (Z.O.A.), the group for whom Papa did most of his fundraising and recruiting work. The offices where Papa wrote his article were at 114 Fifth Avenue between 16th and 17th Streets, a healthy stroll from Papa’s neighborhood but one I’m sure he was glad to take — he was just starting a week off from work and would have wanted to stay occupied to keep depressing thoughts of his father’s recent death at bay.

The Z.O.A. published a number of other periodicals, including, according to the 1923-1924 American Jewish Yearbook, The New Palestine, a weekly, Hatoren, a monthly in Hebrew, and Young Judean, a monthly for Jewish youth in English. Dos Yiddishe Folk was the oldest of the bunch, having first appeared in 1908 when the Z.O.A. still called itself the Federation of American Zionists. (The group’s only earlier publication was a monthly started in 1901 called The Maccabean, but it looks like it was defunct by the 1920’s.)

Here’s a little more on Dos Yiddishe Folk from its own masthead:

Dos Yiddishe Folk, published weekly in the interest of Americas Zionists, by the Zionist Publishing Corp., 114 Fifth Ave., New York.
Telephone Chelsea 10,4000. Abraham Goldberg, Editor; Simon
Bernstein, Managing Editor. Subscription Rates: Payable in advance,
U.S. for 1 year, $2.50; Canada, for 1 year, $3.00; Foreign, for
1 year, $3.50. Single copies 5 cents. Entered as second class matter
February 26, 1909 at the post office at New York, N.Y. under the
Act of March 3, 1879.

In one of the happier moments I’ve had since starting Papa’s Diary Project, I was able to find the article he mentions above on microfilm in the Dorot Room of the New York Public Library.

Praises Editorial in “The Jewish Nation” Concerning the Youth of Zion Convention

Esteemed Comrade Editor,

Allow me to express in our “Jewish Nation” a few words thanking you for the editorial in your most recent edition, about the Youth of Zion convention which recently took place in Buffalo.

As someone who has been well acquainted with the aforementioned organization since its establishment, as well as with its activities, I know what harm they are doing with their separatist policies that are of no use to anyone. Everyone knows the truth, that they do nothing for their own organization as well. In the beginning, a few ringleaders, who were looking for publicity, tried to convince members of Zionist clubs to join them, and they even tried to break up these clubs. At first, some Zionists believed that they would be able to do something in order to appeal to young people with the Land of Israel ideology. But soon everyone saw that this was nothing with nothing. They created a little club in which they could play the roles of “leaders,” and they intoxicate people, encouraging them to fight against the Zionist organization. They prey upon young, recently arrived Zionists from Europe and tell them stories, the Zionist organization in America is too chauvinistic, capitalistic, etc… And the naïve young people, who sincerely believe what they are told, then find themselves unemployed: they are torn away from Zionism and they are given no other work to perform. I am convinced that the honest members of the Youth of Zion organization will have to do what many of their comrades have done for the past two years: they left the Youth of Zion organization and joined the “General” Zionist organization where, whoever wants to, can find their own place and their own tasks to perform.

It is worthwhile to mention that even the “Jewish Nation” greatly exaggerated the amount of money the Youth of Zion raised for the Pioneer Fund. Here, we saw a small group of young Zionists, who are regular members of the second and third districts, collecting money for the World Pioneer Center. There were perhaps not fewer of them than there were members of the Youth of Zion, and they went about their task with no ceremony or publicity, without “leaders” or “national executives.”

And is it not just awful when people organize a so-called convention, and they send a telegram to President Coolidge, and a cable to Prime Minister Macdonald? Do these young people not understand what the Jewish public thinks about such comic and irresponsible actions? Therefore, I offer you my sincere congratulations for your excellent editorial.

With respect and Zionist wishes,

Avrom-Zvi Sheyerman

Tuesday May 27

by


[no entry]

————-

Matt’s Notes

This isn’t the first time Papa has left a page of his diary blank, but under the current circumstances — he’s still mourning his father, has a forced week off from work due to the slack summer season, and is generally prone to depression when idle — his silence seems more loaded.

Still, I’m sure he read the papers that day, so here are a couple of headlines that might have caught his eye:

These were the only two articles in New York Times that day about the upcoming Presidential election, even though 1924 was an election year and the Democratic National Convention was coming to New York in a month. Quite different from the amount of campaign coverage we see in May 2007, even though the election is over a year away.

Some other items of interest for Papa would have included a blurb on the installation of new officers at the American Jewish Historical Society (a group that’s been helpful to this project, by the way) baseball coverage about a Giants win and Yankee and Dodger losses, and reviews of the films Cytherea and the now-legendary Sherlock, Jr. with Buster Keaton.

Wednesday May 28

by

My Fathers Farewell to me

A beautiful Spring night at the
foot of the hill where my hometown
Sniatyn lies, at the Railroad station
early in June 1913, my father went
to bid me farewell on my long Journey
to America.

The train is waiting, a long
embrace a kiss, tears streaming
down from his eyes,

Did he have a premonition that
we would see each other no more?

The train is moving out slowly
and by the light of the moon I
could see through the window in the
distance my father [olam haba] weeping
and wiping his tears.

———-

Matt’s Notes

I hesitate to intrude on Papa right now, but if you’re interested to know, here’s what comes to mind when I read this passage:

Somewhere around 1977 or 1978, my fifth grade teacher assigned my class a project called “Where Are My Roots?” for which we all had to write a report on our family histories. (The T.V. miniseries Roots, about an African-American family’s enslaved ancestors, was all the rage back then and had touched off a bit of a genealogy craze.) My report was about Papa’s emigration from Sniatyn, and though I don’t remember much about it, I know the centerpiece was a photocopy of the above entry. (My mother picked it out and my father “Xeroxed” it at his office, whatever that meant).

This sad, sweet passage was my first introduction to Papa’s diary, and though I didn’t quite understand its context (I hadn’t read the whole diary and didn’t know Papa wrote it in the wake of his father’s death) I was fascinated with its structure and scope: It seemed soaring, lyrical, surprisingly literary in the way it switched tenses, familiarly cinematic in its description of Papa’s last, dwindling look at his weeping father from the window of a moving train. From my young perspective, these words felt epic in scale, like they opened onto infinity, and until I transcribed them last year I thought they went on for pages.

When I was a child I used to imagine that Papa’s ghost was looking out for me, hovering just out of sight over my shoulder. I was, in fact, terribly afraid of ghosts and spent many nights awake, under my covers, hiding from them. But to fear something is also to acknowledge its existence; was I willing, I ask rhetorically, to believe the world was full of ghosts just to convince myself Papa’s could still be with me? (It occurs to me now that I also used to think the ghosts in my house lived in a chair my grandmother gave us, a chair that for years occupied the apartment she shared with Papa.)

I mention this because I think it helps explain why, at eleven, this passage felt so important to me. I would not have been able to articulate how much I missed Papa or how much I longed for the lost feelings I associated with him. But to read his words was to hear the gentle murmur of his voice; to become lost in his prose was to feel his warmth; to see him wonder at his father’s “premonition that we would see each other no more” was to experience his idealistic optimism (anyone else would have known that he was saying goodbye to his father for good that night in Sniatyn, yet even eleven years later he chose to interpret the inevitable as a sign of his father’s wisdom).

Though it is, in reality, just one small page of an old pocket diary, this entry has indeed kept Papa with me for the last thirty years. I have hoped to revisit it, I have hoped to understand it more fully, I have hoped it might hold something more for me. I have hoped, each time I sit down to write, that I might one day compose something as spare and perfect and beautiful. But mostly I have hoped to be like Papa because I will never see him again. I will never see him again, even if he is just behind me, over my shoulder.

⇐ Previous 7 Days|Next 7 Days ⇒