Papas Diary Project

Maccab. m.

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Matt’s Notes

Papa hasn’t written anything in his diary for the past four days, and today he manages only to squeeze out two abbreviated words: “Maccab. m.” conveys, in as few letters as possible, his attendance at a meeting of his chapter of the fraternal order B’nai Zion, which goes by the nickname “The Maccabean.”

I think his recent silence, including today’s spare effort, reflects a reluctance to dwell on his private thoughts more than he has to, an exhaustion, perhaps, with his ongoing sadness and chronic longing for change. These feelings have likely become attenuated due to the approaching High Holy Days, a long stretch of contemplative milestones during which observant Jews meditate on repentance, stock-taking, and mourning. Papa really doesn’t need much help in any of these departments, and as a spiritually devoted Jew he must have found this stretch of 1924 almost too much to bear, or at least too much to write about.

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I performed my duties and played my part at the meeting as ever. We discussed the collection of dues and Jack gave a report on our progress with the credit union. After that it was as if I had used up all my words. I lingered and watched as the boys put on their coats and hats and hurried off, eager to reach their homes, alight with burning candles and the bright faces of their wives and their children. To write letters home so everyone overseas can know of their good fortune.

To what do I hurry? To whom should I write?

movie

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Matt’s Notes

For the second day in a row Papa delivers a barely-there diary entry, which to me is as sure a sign of his overwhelming internal struggles as the blank entries from earlier in the week. It’s not that he’s too busy, or tired, or distracted to write more. I think the changes he’s going through in the wake of his father’s death, and the contemplation of these changes triggered by the onset of the Jewish High Holy Days, have simply left him speechless. With his relationship to the world in question, with sadness and doubt shaking his foundations in ways he cannot yet understand, it must seem pointless, foreign, to discuss his day-to-day activities, maybe even dangerous to say anything at all. So, from this mass of emotion and contained turbulence he allows one word — “movie” — to escape before he clamps the lid back on, afraid, perhaps, of what else he might want to say.

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Still, Papa did go to the movies, so we should mention a few that he might have seen:

• Merton of the Movies, a “brilliant pictorial effort” (according to the New York Times) adapted from a George S. Kaufman play
• Sinners in Silk, a tale of idle rich New Yorkers
• Sinners in Heaven (looks like sin was in that Fall) a shipwreck story deemed “one of the dreariest efforts we have seen for some time” by the Times
• The Clean Heart, a touching tale of a writer’s nervous breakdown and recovery
• The Alaskan, a scenic drama about competing ranchers
• Captain Blood, criticized by the Times for its poor directorial technique
• Open All Night, a feature with little, it seems, to recommend it other than a well-depicted bicycle race
• Wine, a story of bootlegging and frivolous youth
• Feet of Clay, a Cecile B. De Mille effort dismissed as an indulgent trifle by the Times review. Interestingly, this review also mentions a “Phonofilm” — an early form of sound film — featuring 1924’s three major Presidential candidates, incumbent Calvin Coolidge, Democratic nominee John W. Davis, and independent Robert M. La Follette. A Times article from earlier in September describes Davis’ experience while filming his interview for this novel effort:
  

  Mr. Davis spoke on the lawn a short distance from his home. The motion picture camera was set up about ten feet from him and a microphone placed on a stand about four feet away to his left. Behind the microphone was a cabinet enclosing and amplifier. This connected with a second amplifier in the motor truck which carried the apparatus to the Davis home…

  Dr. De Forest [the director] explained that the film with sound waves photographed on it is made to pass in front of a fixed light. This light, when transmitted through the film, is flucutating. With the aid of a device known as the Case cell the fluctuation light is translated into electric current. This current is amplified a million times and then turned into sound waves again through loud speakers…

Great stuff. Meanwhile, other films hanging around town included:

• America, one of D.W. Griffith’s great masterpieces
• Yolanda
• The Sea Hawk
• Monsieur Beaucaire
• Wine
• Captain Blood
• The Iron Horse
• The Man Who Came Back
• Flirting with Love
• Janice Meredith
• The Ten Commandments
• The Thief of Bagdad

Ballgame & movie

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Matt’s Notes

With the Yankees out of town, Papa would have seen either the New York Giants clinch the Pennant with their win over the Phillies at the Polo Grounds or the Brooklyn Robins (a.k.a. Dodgers) — who were still in the race when the day began — lose to the Boston Braves. I suppose he must have seen the Dodgers game because, even considering his recent reluctance to write much in his diary, he surely couldn’t have witnessed the winning moment of such a down-to-the-wire Pennant race (this was the second-to-last game of the season for both teams) without making some note of it. It also follows that he would have left the Dodgers game with a sour feeling (much as I did after watching the Mets squander a four-run lead at Shea Stadium last night) and attempted to chase it away by going to a movie.

Erev Rosh Hashonah

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Rosh Hashanah is more commonly known as the Jewish New Year, a time of reflection, repentance and contemplation of the coming year. Papa had a deep connection with Judaism and erev Rosh Hashanah (the eve of Rosh Hashana) ordinarily would have imbued him with a solemn, spiritual awe.

This year, however, Papa would observe the first Rosh Hashanah since his beloved father’s death, the first Rosh Hashanah since he’d realized his childhood was forever lost, his family was forever changed, and his adopted country was no longer just a temporary stop on the way to some imagined restoration of the world he once knew. He must have been bent with the burden of his sadness. Was he able to hide it, as he preferred to do, from his sisters as he walked from synagogue with them, ate with them, blessed the challah and recited the prayers his father had taught him?

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I’ve searched my memory and I cannot recall any Rosh Hashanah with Papa, though I know I must have spent at least four with him. By the time I was born he would have shaken his sadness, during the holidays he would have been speechless not with feelings of loss and confusion, but with feelings of joy over his family’s presence, perfect happiness over my presence. I must have known it, this perfect happiness.

1st. day R.H.

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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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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.