Wednesday Oct 29

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At Kesslers Thea.
Enjoyed Kreuzer Sonato

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Matt’s Notes

“Kessler’s Theater,” also known as Kessler’s Second Avenue Theater, was a legendary Yiddish playhouse founded by the equally legendary actor and producer David Kessler. Located at Second Street, it was a linchpin of the Second Avenue stretch known as the “Yiddish Rialto” for its heavy concentration of theaters and cultural hot spots. (One
such hot spot was Cafe Royale, where Papa and his friends used to hang out and discuss weighty matters until the wee hours.)

Kessler was wildly popular among Jewish New Yorkers of the early 20th Century; his death in 1920 shook the neighborhood and the Jewish community, as indicated by the account of his funeral in the New York Times:

David Kessler, famed Yiddish actor, was buried yesterday amid the sorrowing of one of the greatest crowds that ever gathered for a ceremony of mourning on the east side. More than 100 patrolmen were needed to hold in check those who vied for places from which to veiw the cortege of the ghetto favorite…

The anonymous Times writer goes on to indulge in a wee bit of anti-Semitic caricature, rounding out the scene with a description of “picturesque old Jews, with flowing beards and white hair” along with the “peddlers, doing an active business in the sale of songs bearing the picture of the late star,” but I suppose deadline pressure can lead to insensitivity. Anyway, whole picturesque procession snaked through the Lower East Side and over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn, where “a grave had been selected near those of other favorites of the Yiddish drama and its public.” Perhaps Papa, wherever he might have been in 1920, caught a glimpse of it as it went by.

One last, odd detail: Kessler’s death was due to a “severe intestinal ailment” that struck while he was watching a stage adaptation of the Tolstoy novella The Kreutzer Sonata. As you’ll notice, the “Kreutzer” Sonata was also the name of the musical piece Papa saw at Kessler’s theater and reports on in today’s entry. (Tolstoy felt that the “Kreutzer” Sonata, formally known as Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major, was intolerably sensual, and it inspired him to write and name after it a story about the perils of carnal love.) Was this unseemly coincidence just an oversight on the part of whoever booked the concert, or was it a deliberate gesture? Did Papa, who would have read all about Kessler’s death four years earlier, get the connection?

In any event, “Kreutzer” is a beautiful piece of music with an interesting story of its own: Beethoven originally dedicated it to the violinist George Bridgetower, who performed its premier with Beethoven. When Bridgetower inadvertently insulted one of Beethoven’s friends, though, Beethoven switched the dedication to famed violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. It’s supposed to be one of the more technically demanding violin pieces around — Kreutzer himself said it was impossible to play and never actually performed it — but you be the judge (the video below has the first movement only; see the podcast listed under “references” for the whole thing):

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References for this post:

New York Times References:

  • THE STORY AND TASK OF DAVID KESSLER; The Adventures of an Actor-Manager Who Was Trained in Russia and Rumania to Run a Theatre in Second Avenue. “Poor Butterfly.” (March 4th, 1917)
  • DAVID KESSLER DIES; NOTED YIDDISH ACTOR; Stricken While Acting Role in a Tolstoy Play, His Death Follows an Operation. (May 15, 1920)
  • EAST SIDE MOURNS AT KESSLER BURIAL; Great Crowds Attend Funeral Services for Yiddish Actor in Second Avenue Theatre. POLICE LEAD THE CORTEGE Many Business Houses Closed–Theatrical Unions In Procession–Bertha Kalish Delivers Eulogy. (May 18, 1920)

Here’s some more on Kessler’s Theatre from Cinematreasures.org.
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Image source:

1927 Second Avenue Theater Program Cover from the Milken Archive of American Jewish Music

Thursday Oct 30

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Visited Down Town dist
paid my dues for 1925.
Still noisy with the pre-
election speeches.

On way home I saw
Teddy Roosevelt, rep. nominee
for Governor of n.y. marching
down Houston St., does not
impress me at all.

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Matt’s Notes

The Teddy Roosevelt mentioned in this entry is Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the eldest son of former President Teddy Roosevelt and, as Papa notes, the challenger to incumbent Democratic Al Smith in the 1924 New York gubernatorial race. Papa must have spotted him just before or after Teddy (as he liked to be called) wrapped up a long day of campaigning with a dinner at the Little Hungary Restaurant at 257 East Houston Street. The Little Hungary was, according to the New York Times, “a place always associated with his father,” but his visit to the Lower East Side was more than just a sentimental gesture; it was a high-profile foray into the most solid Smith territory imaginable, for Smith had grown up on the Lower East Side and drew much of his popular appeal from his humble neighborhood roots.

Papa’s lack of enthusiasm for Roosevelt isn’t surprising. Papa was a Democrat through and through and had rooted for Smith during Smith’s unsuccessful run for the Democratic Presidential nomination earlier in the year (“He is a good boy, I hope he will be nominated,” wrote Papa at the time.) Teddy was also under harsh assault at the time by the Democratic establishment and in particular his cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Smith supporter. Teddy was, until recently, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (a position Franklin had previous occupied) and Franklin did his best to link him to the brewing Teapot Dome scandal, an easy task since the scandal centered on illicit land purchases facilitated by Secretary of the Navy Edwin C. Denby. (Denby had resigned earlier in the year.)

Smith would go on to win the election and Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. would later become famous for his World War II exploits. When Teddy died in 1944, would Papa read about it and remember the moment he saw him “marching down Houston St.”?

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References for this post:

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Image Source:

“Now step right to the front” by Clifford Kennedy Berryman. Library of Congress # LC-USZ62-10783. This cartoon relates to Smith’s run for the Democratic Presidential nomination, not his re-election campaign for Governor of New York, but it does demonstrate how important the Teapot Dome scandal was in 1924.

Friday Oct 31

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Home

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Papa has been writing more words more regularly in his diary over the last few days than he has in months, and even though he didn’t say much in today’s entry, it’s the first time in a while he’s written “Home” to describe an uneventful day as opposed to something more pointed and downcast like “Dull” or “Empty.”

This more communicative mood started a few days after the Jewish High Holy days, a spiritually demanding period that includes Yom Kippur (a day of formal mourning, fasting and repentance) as well as Simchas Torah (a celebration of renewal and faith that found Papa dancing in the streets with his friends from the old country). These were the first High Holy Days Papa had been through since his father’s death, and he had, in fact, written only spottily in the days immediately before and after.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think the High Holy Days were a profoundly introspective time for Papa during which he simply could not bring himself to write. Perhaps his recent change in tone and willingness to report on his activities shows he’s starting to sort through his tangle of inexpressible feelings and emerge from his period of deep contemplation. Maybe the active Fall social and political season has lifted his spirits simply by keeping him busier and giving him more to thing about, too. (Remember that the streets were jumping with Presidential, gubernatorial, and local political campaigning; the atmosphere in New York was alive and frenzied.) We’ll have to watch and see what develops.

Saturday Nov 1

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Visited Bar Kochba Camp
in Bronx. Enjoyed
Judget Stahls adress on
his impressions in Palestine
and later went home
together with him.

I have hired a religious man
this eve. to say Kadish for the
soul of my beloved father for
the remaining 5 months as
it will be impossible for me to
do so in the winter however
at every opportunity I will
go to the Synagogue to say it
myself also.

I paid the man $5.00 deposit
and $5.00 more to be paid.

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Matt’s Notes

There’s lots to cover here but not a lot of time, so let’s hit the facts:

1 – The “Bar Kochba” Camp in the Bronx is a chapter of B’nai Zion, a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion, the fraternal order to which Papa belonged. The nickname refers to the fierce warrior, Simon Bar Cochba, who led a Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 A.D. and briefly reclaimed much of Palestine before his forces were defeated in 135 A.D. (The revolt had been brewing for some time but apparently started in earnest when the Emperor Hadrian attempted to build a temple to Jupiter where the Jewish people expected to build their Third Temple). I’m sure Papa approved of the “Bar Cochba” camp’s nickname because it conveyed an image of strength and competence; he had insisted on nicknaming his own B’nai Zion camp “The Maccabean” after the Jewish warriors of old.

2 – Papa left the Bar Cochba camp (located at 953 Southern Boulevard in the Bronx) with Jacob Strahl, a liberal Judge and former B’nai Zion Nasi (or head) who left for Palestine back in July in order to establish the Judea Insurance Company on behalf of B’nai Zion. Papa attended a farewell dinner on the eve of Strahl’s departure and found it inspiring, so he must have been thrilled to travel back to Manhattan with him.

3 – As my mother pointed out a while back, observant Jews say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, morning and night for the first year after the death of a loved one. I think Papa had been pretty diligent about it and I’m not sure why he felt he’d be unable to continue this practice into the winter (perhaps he expected to work more hours or an earlier shift at the factory) but it’s not unusual to hire someone to say these prayers if the need arises. (When Papa died, his sister Clara gave money to a group called the Old Sages of Israel to say Kaddish for him.)

4 – The bottom of this diary page has a printed message that reads:

A REMINDER — Have you ordered your diary for next year?
For duplicate of this book order by number in front.

I don’t know if Papa ever ordered another diary, because this is the only one I have. Can it really be so close to the end?

title

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References for this post:

Sunday Nov 2

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Morning rather dull.
Called up a few friends.

Evening.

Balfour Declaration Day
(7th) celebration at Down
Town Zionist district.

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Matt’s Notes

The Balfour Declaration was, as even those with a passing interest in the modern Middle East know, a statement offered by the British government on November 2, 1917 stating that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…” I can only imagine how Papa, who had left his own country due to anti-Semitism and whose attachment to the Zionist cause was both spiritual and visceral — he saw it, I think, as an almost literal matter of survival — reacted to this development when it happened. I’m sure his elation and surprise and astonishment remained fresh even after seven years, though I expect the “celebration” he describes above was more solemn than raucous.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to think I might have the wrong idea about what Papa calls the “Down Town Zionist district.” I’ve assumed for a while this means a chapter of the Zionist Organization of America; he has frequently referred to Z.O.A. chapters as “districts,” especially when discussing his efforts to attract more members to the troubled First District. Still, a big event like a Balfour Declaration celebration couldn’t have happened “at” a chapter of an organization, especially a troubled one that probably didn’t have central offices or headquarters.

I’m going to have to look into this a little more. The Internets have thus far given me only a tiny New York Times mention of a “Downtown Zionist Centre” on St. Marks Place and a reference to a 1927 “Ticket to Grand Ball of the Downtown Zionist District, New York” on the U.C. Santa Cruz library Web site, while my usual go-to research libraries don’t seem to have anything. These things take time to unfold, though. As always, please e-mail or drop a comment if you know where to find out more.

Monday Nov 3

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Home night.

I arranged with Mr. Snidert
to sell gowns to individuals
on a percentage basis.

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Matt’s Notes

It looks like Papa, like countless New Yorkers before and after him, figured it couldn’t hurt to supplement his income with a little side business, and I imagine this was especially common among Papa’s contemporaries in the garment industry. Labor laws had pretty much put and end to the days when full-blown garment manufacturing actually took place in the living rooms of tenement apartments, but Jewish New Yorkers (and other recent immigrants, of course) still took in plenty of sewing and washing and tailoring. I’m sure it was typical for people like Papa to work as sales reps, too.

I wonder whether the man he sold gowns for was his factory boss as well, or if he was a neighbor or acquaintance he’d met through friends or co-workers. I also wonder what his name really was. It looks like Papa wrote “Mr. Snidert,” but I can’t really tell:

Tuesday Nov 4

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Election Day

The usual election noise
around my neighborhood more
than in any other part of the city
Stopped half day a union holiday.

Visited Rifke in E.N.Y. with
Clara & Sadie present. I went
there in quest of customers
of Claras friends.

9 P.M. Home & radio
listening to radio returns.

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Matt’s Notes

Papa mentioned yesterday his intention to supplement his income by selling womens’ gowns on the side (he worked in a garment factory during the day) and today we see his first attempt: A trip to Brooklyn with his cousin Sadie and one of the many women in his life named “Clara.” (Papa’s sister was named Clara, but so was his cousin Sadie’s sister. Papa knew cousins Sadie, Clara their other sister Eva rather intimately, since he stayed in their home and shared a bed with them when he first came to America in 1913.) Papa has stopped by Rifke’s house in East New York a couple of times on his way to events sponsored by the Kessler Zion Club, but I don’t know if she was a cousin as well or just a close friend.

It seems like Rifke’s house became the scene of a little direct sales party, with Papa showing catalogues and fabric swatches or, perhaps, pulling entire gowns out of a sample case and passing them around the room. I’ll try to learn more about what someone like him really would have carried on a sales call, but meanwhile it’s worth noting that he was able to take his Brooklyn trip because he had half the day off for Election Day, an admirable show of cultural enlightenment we might not expect from a country that had, in the words of President Coolidge’s election eve get-out-the-vote speech, only “lately…added to our voting population the womanhood of the nation.” (Unfortunately, we don’t expect it from 21st century America, either.)

Perhaps a more historically interesting detail from this entry is Papa’s account of how he “listened to radio returns in the evening.” This seems like an offhand statement, but with the exception of a few early radio enthusiasts who had picked up some experimental coverage of the 1920 Harding-Cox returns from Pittsburgh’s pioneering station KDKA, no American could have written such a thing about a national election before 1924. A New York Times article from November 2, 1924 called the 1920 KDKA broadcast as the birth date of modern broadcasting went on to discuss the explosive growth of the industry:

Into these four years has been crowded the most extraordinary progress which has ever followed any of the great scientific discoveries. After the invention of the steam engine, steam-boat, telephone and airplane a generation or more has been required to bring about a similar development.

Today, when radio broadcasting is so much a part of our national life, the crude methods of four years ago and its limited application seem to belong to another century. The pioneers in broadcasting faced a small audience. It was only possible for a few hundred to listen in, and these were grouped for the most part within a narrow radius. Today 530 broadcasting stations are scattered across the United States, and daily teach and entertain an audience estimated at upward of 10,000,000 people.

As sophisticated as modern radio might have seemed to the Times, it still devoted thousands of awestruck words throughout the year, and especially in the days leading up to the elections, to the logistics of nationally broadcast campaign speeches and Election Day coverage. AT&T, by then an innovative and important player in the radio business, led the way by linking its stations and facilitating simultaneous broadcasts via phone lines, an arrangement the Times referred to, in quotes to denote the freshness of the term, as a “hook-up.”

I mention all this not to laugh at the quaint technology of the early 20th century, but to better understand the world Papa lived in, and to examine another facet of his personal evolution, in this case the process through which radio makes its way into his life: he is quietly delighted when he hears an early Presidential speech; cheers the broadcasts of his favorite musicians; suffers through the dramatic, epic implosion of the Democratic party at its National Convention; feels lonely when he listens too long by himself.

The 1924 Election Day broadcast lasted until 1:00 AM on New York’s WEAF, and I’m sure he listened to every minute, found it a remarkable addition to the traditional, street-level campaign clamor he’d become accustomed to (or at least become accustomed to hating) in recent weeks. Still, I wonder how much longer such broadcasts would strike him as remarkable, how long it would be until, one day without even realizing it, he turned off the radio because he just didn’t feel like hearing the President’s voice.

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New York Times references for this post:

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