Wednesday Dec 24

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Christmas Eve.
at Rifkis and then
with Clara B. at Sophie
Zimermans house,

————

Matt’s Notes

Christmas obviously wasn’t that important to Papa as a religious holiday, so he probably mentions it here due to its more secular implications: an early exit from work on Christmas Eve, a day off on Christmas Day, and chance to stay up late visiting Rifki and Sophie Zimmerman (whoever they are) in the company of his cousin Clara Breindel. While he eventually learned to make other holidays like Thanksgiving his own (in a pattern typical for Jewish immigrants like Papa, certain American holidays didn’t make their way entirely into his life until his child, a.k.a. my mother, brought them home from school) I expect he remained only incidentally interested in Christmas throughout his life.

It’s worth noting that Papa doesn’t mention Hanukkah in his diary at all — evidence, perhaps, of its unimportance to Jews of earlier eras. (I’ve never known a time when Hanukkah wasn’t a major gift-giving holiday, but most Jews I know consider its popular elevation to Christmas-like significance to be an obvious and even unseemly contrivance.) Then again, if we consider that he argued to nickname his chapter of B’nai Zion, the Zionist fraternal organization to which he belonged, “The Maccabean” after the Jewish warrior heroes of the Hanukkah story, we might conclude that Hanukkah meant at least something to him. In fact, he didn’t write his his diary for the three days surrounding Hanukkah’s December 22nd start, and as we’ve learned by now his diary silences often signaled some kind of emotional struggle: When Papa was a boy, did his his father, the religious school teacher, thrill him with tales of the Maccabees and their exploits? Did Hanukkah, despite its insignificance to the Jewish community, trigger in Papa a longing for home? Was this longing even more difficult this year because his father died only a few months earlier?

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Update 12/25

My mother says Papa always told her stories about the Maccabees on Hanukkah, confirming (perhaps) that Papa may have heard those same stories from his own parents.

Thursday Dec 25

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[no entry today]

——–

[no entry today]

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Matt’s Notes

No entry from Papa today, but we can picture him taking a good, long look at the morning papers on his day off. The Christmas edition of the New York Times has what seems like an unusually large complement of macabre stories, with tales of a crashed plane, a sunken boat, and a wrecked train accompanying more typical accounts of auto accidents and crimes gone awry. So follow me, if you dare, to look at some of the headlines that might have caught Papa’s eye:

Some of the less gruesome stories of interest to Papa might have been:

  • BIG PARADE FOR SMITH.; Over 3,500 State Troops to March at Governor’s Inauguration. – Papa admired New York Governor Al Smith’s pro-labor policies and had rooted for his nomination during the 1924 Democratic Presidential Convention. As an activist in both labor and Zionist causes, Papa took a keen interest in politics even though he was not yet a voting citizen.
  • 500,000 GERMAN RADIO FANS.; Only 2,000 a Year Ago — 100,000 New Ones a Month Now Expected. – Papa was an early radio enthusiast, as we well know by now, so I’m sure he would have have followed any news about the developing broadcast industry with great interest. (This day’s paper also carried an account of the first-ever Christmas service broadcastfrom St. Paul’s Chapel in New York over WEAF, one of Papa’s favorite stations.) It’s odd to think there was a time when I didn’t know this about Papa, but it was a real surprise when I discovered it back in January. I suppose it’s normal, but I must say I’m getting sentimental about the early days of this project as Papa’s diary reaches its final pages.
  • NEW YEAR’S WEEK OPERAS.; ” Falstaff” Revival and “Meistersinger” Among Ten Performances. – Papa had attended performances at the Met quite frequently toward the end of 1924, and there’s no reason to think he didn’t keep it up for the rest of the opera season. Some of the productions mentioned in this article that he might have been looking forward to include “Falstaff,” “Mesitersinger,” “Parsifal,” “Fedora” and “Aida.”
  • RUSH TO SEE ‘THE MIRACLE.’; Police Halt Stampede in Cleveland — Seat Sale Over $250,000. – This article refers to the road tour of a high-profile theatrical extravaganza that Papa caught at the Century Theatre earlier in the year. (He called it “the most stupendous production I’ve ever seen” at the time.) The Times article likens the “stampede for the box office” to “the scene…which takes place prior to the initial struggle of the baseball world’s series.”
  • UNIONS TO SPEND $1,000,000 ON HOMES; Needle Trade Organizations Plan to Erect Block of Model Apartment Buildings. – Though Papa has written mostly about his Zionist activism in his diary, he was an equally enthusiastic labor activist and would likely have known about this story — a planned low-rent housing complex in the Bronx for members of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the Furriers’ Union and the Cap Makers’ Union — before it appeared in the paper. In case you’re wondering, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. eventually took over this project, and the results was a low-cost cooperative called Thomas Garden Apartments at 840 Mott Avenue (now called Grand Concourse) at 158th Street.
  • ROBINSON UNDERGOES A SECOND OPERATION; Manager of Brooklyn Robins Is Reported in Good Condition at Baltimore Hospital. – Papa was a big baseball fan and seemed equally fond of all three New York teams (though I am reluctant to acknowledge the statistical evidence that hints at his preference for the Yankees in 1924). I’m sure any scrap of baseball news would have been welcome on this cold and snowy day, even an account of Wilbert Robinson’s pleurisy surgery.

Friday Dec 26

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[no entry today]

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In my dream the sun shines and I am old and I walk on the sidewalk with a little boy. He wears strange clothes, short pants and sandals but still he wears a little brown sweater. His sandals are made of rubber, it seems, colored blue and glinting. A woman passes and smiles and asks him how old he is, I am three he tells her.

The little boy holds my hand as we walk, I lean to one side, reach down so as to keep my hand in his. I look down and see the top of his head, a pile of golden curls, he coos and sings and it is as if the voice issues forth from the curls themselves. The neighborhood is unfamiliar to me, the sidewalk is not crowded and doormen in uniforms stand and wave as we walk by. Curls of music, I tell one of them, he nods and smiles and it does not matter if he doesn’t understand.

Now I am the little boy too and as I walk I step into a bit of dog dirt on the sidewalk and I stop and pick up my foot and put it back down, I begin to speak but I feel as if I might cry, I do not know what to do next. I look up and see my old self standing over me, a smiling figure with grey hair and glasses and a hat. I become my old self too and I see the little boy’s distress, and I take the handkerchief from my pocket I bend down and wipe off his shoe, just a tiny bit of dirt. I fold the handkerchief and think I might discard it but now the little boy is happy again and we are walking in the park and I remember it is spring. The little boy stoops to examine a plant and I bend down to see and I can smell the damp earth and the little boy’s hair, soapy and clean from his bath and I touch his curls and my heart is so full I cannot breathe and I whisper to him “It is spring, it is spring my dear one and endings do not matter.”

Saturday Dec 27

by


Attended the 10th Anniversary
Party of the former David
Wolfsohn Club.

Recalled former days by
meeting old timers from the
club. Men and women.

—————

Matt’s Notes

It looks like the “10th Anniversary Party of the former David Wolfsohn Club” commemorated the 1914 death of David Wolfsohn, a major early Zionist leader who helped found the Jewish Colonial Trust and later succeeded his close companion Theodor Herzl as president of the World Zionist Organization.

Papa had been in America for just a year in 1914, so the “old timers” he hung out with on this night knew him when he was young, just learning English, and sharing a bed with four other people in his cousin’s living room. The David Wolfsohn Club may even have been the first Zionist organization Papa joined in New York. Still, he doesn’t wax sentimental about this party in the same way he did when he attended the Sniatyner ball (an annual reunion of people from his town in the old country) back in February. Perhaps, with the new year and its inevitable complement of extra self-assessment at hand, a reminder of his younger days made him reflect more than usual on his dissatisfaction with his life’s progress. (Then again, maybe he had a great time and was too just too tired to describe the party in more detail.)

I’m also curious as to why the phrase “Men and women” appears, almost as an afterthought, at the end of this entry. It’s not Papa’s style to write this way. I get the feeling he added it not to point out that men were in attendance, but to remind himself of the women he encountered, perhaps an old girlfriend or two who had roles in the intense, heady drama of his early days in this country.

Sunday Dec 28

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Sadie B’s company was
pleasant.

Just Kissable.

Evening at Channukaa
Partyat Jack’s (Zichlinsky)
Hart St. home.

—————

Matt’s Notes

“Sadie B.” must be Sadie Breindel, one of the three distant cousins with whom Papa shared a bed when he first came to America (Clara and Eva were the others, and all were the daughters of Max and Dora, who continued to favor Papa with their generosity throughout his young life).

As we’ve noted before, my grandmother used to shout “you slept with my husband!” when she’d see Sadie in later years, and though this line never failed to kill I’m now starting to wonder if Papa didn’t actually carry a torch for Sadie. I thought it might have signalled more than just brotherly affection for her diminutive figure when he called her “little Sadie” earlier in the year, but what else are we supposed to think when he refers to her as “just kissable” in today’s entry? (At least I think it says “just,” though the word “kissable” is unmistakable.)

Papa may have had Sadie’s kissable lips on his mind as he watched her eat latkes and sing about the Maccabees at Jack Zichlinsky’s party, but little did he know my grandmother (a.k.a. “Nana”) was less than three blocks away, or that he was destined to meet her and fall for her completely within the next four months. (Jack was at #24 Hart Street and my grandmother lived with her family at #226.) I don’t know exactly when he met her, but we’ve recently unearthed the letters he wrote her throughout their courtship, the first of which is dated April 22, 1925. I’ll be posting them next year.

Monday Dec 29

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Home early, and
later in evening, visited
Lena’s and Jean’s new
homes.

My prayer now is to
get a good wife and that
I may be able to build for her
such a beautiful home.

————-

Matt’s Notes

I’m tempted once again to read Papa’s diary like a novel, but of course I know cousin Jean, who opened the year by diagnosing Papa as “in love with love,” isn’t written into this entry for a closing bow, nor is Papa’s prayer for “a good wife” a deliberate echo of his January 1st vow to find “a girl (of my dreams) with a vision to see also the good things that are in me.”

Still, I suppose it’s understandable, after a year of shadowing Papa’s life, for me to look in his diary’s final pages for a dramatic conclusion, a shift, or just a cagey, oblique glimpse of whatever would transform him from the heartsick dreamer he was in 1924 into the serene and satisfied man he would become.

Such transformative moments are not, of course, to be found in most diaries or in most lives. Still, in this entry we do at least find an example of what we’ve always known about Papa. When he visits his cousins and sees their beautiful new homes (two-bedroom apartments in Williamsburg, perhaps?) he does not envy them or begrudge them their accomplishments. He simply hopes to have what they have, to get what he wants, so he can offer it to someone else.

This devotion to the happiness of others, this privately-stated need to give of himself, is also not to be found in most diaries or in most lives. Papa wrote about it this late in the year only incidentally; it always was and always would be there. Forgive me, though, if on December 29th I think it feels something like an ending.

Tuesday Dec 30

by


Home and radio night.

The year is ending
a new book shall be
written.

and may the pages
chronicle only happy
events. Amen

—————

Matt’s Notes

Papa’s had a mixed relationship with “home and radio” nights all year. As we’ve discussed before, the kit-built radio set he posed with in the photo below indicates an early adopter’s love for the medium (by “early” we mean he’d probably built his radio set somewhere around 1922 when commercial radio first became viable) and 1924 was particularly full of breakout developments in broadcasting. Among other things, it was the first year a presidential campaign season, including both national conventions, played out on the airwaves, it was the debut year of New York’s venerable public radio station, WNYC, and it was the year AT&T, the biggest corporate player in the industry, made nationwide broadcasts through connected affiliate stations a common practice.

Yet thrilling as it was to listen to the radio in 1924, the isolating effect of Papa’s headphones put an unwelcome accent on a year in which his longing for companionship became deeper and less forgiving. Though he had no privacy when he was “living in board,” his move to an apartment of his own on Attorney Street left him ill at ease and disconnected. This intensified, as those of you who have been following well know, after he learned of his father’s death in the old country, an event that left him bereft, unmoored and, since it fell to him to cover burial expenses, depressingly in debt. (He felt so desperate that he invited his neighbor’s son to stay in his apartment for a time.) Later on he got himself a telephone so he could hear some friendly voices in his spare surroundings, but he found as little comfort in it as he did in formerly reliable distractions like movies, baseball, and his radio.

The year was not entirely free of satisfying moments, naturally. Papa enjoyed his visits to Coney Island, the Metropolitan Opera house, and New York’s assorted parks; he felt the pangs of love for a couple of different women, and though these episodes were disappointing in the end they were food for his romantic soul; he co-founded the “Maccabean” chapter of the fraternal organization, B’nai Zion (Order Sons of Zion) and became its Master of Ceremonies; he saw speeches by and occasionally met his Zionist heroes; he witnessed the first endorsement of Zionism by organized labor, a spiritually inspiring convergence of his most beloved causes; and he welcomed the arrival of two new nephews.

By the end of the year, Papa had emerged from the shadow of mourning and perhaps grown up a little. As I’ve mentioned before, I think his father’s death allowed him, if in a wrenching, unpleasant way, to give up his attachment to the old country and the long-held dream that he could somehow recapture the idealized comforts of his boyhood. It may, in fact, have helped him stop spending quite so much time with his daydreams in general, prompted him to stop wishing for the life he would like and start working on the life he could have. It was, for Papa, a remarkable year, the sort of year people have when they’re twenty-nine.

I wonder, did Papa review his own year in the way I just have when he penned his 1924 diary’s last “home and radio” entry? Or did he just think about the coming year and his prayer to fill “a new book” with only “happy events”? If such a book literally exists I don’t have it, but I know his future. I know he was about to meet my grandmother, I know he would, at last, have a family of his own. I know he found his happiness and that his happiness included me. And I know I’m here now, and I know he can’t hear me, but I swear I’m sitting and whispering the word “Papa” like a spell, whispering Papa, Papa, Papa, please tell me what comes next.

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