[no entry today]

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In my dream I have a beard and I can see it while I look down to read. I read out loud from the prayer in the book before me. I can read the words but they are not Hebrew or any language I understand.

I see now my father is watching me. His beard is gray. He asks me if I’ve lost my book. I look down and my book is gone and my beard has grown to the floor. It is attached to the floor by something. My father asks me to find my book and I see now I am in the schul in Sniatyn, but unlike the schul too because it is a round room and so dark I cannot see across it. I see only the curved wall disappearing into the blackness.

The voices of the congregation echo in the air as I walk to find my book. My beard is attached to the floor but still I walk and the eyes of the congregation follow me. They sit and look at me and stay very still like the photograph of my brother and sisters. My father stands and watches me as I walk around the edge of the room but I cannot see him well and soon he is but a shadow.

I follow the walls of the room and continue to circle but I see no congregation nothing but the walls. A few more steps and there are chairs and beds in little alcoves in the wall, and I want to sit or rest but I must find my book and bring it back to my father. I hope he has not moved because the only way I can find him is if I follow the walls back to where I was.

[no entry today]

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In my dream I am in the bed I shared with Isaac when I was a boy. It is bigger than it really was, even if I stretch my arms out I cannot touch the sides. Gittel and Ettel are there and they pull the blanket tight over my body. It is warm but I cannot move. They smile and coo and they walk around the bed and with pins they fasten the blanket to the mattress. I try to tell them to remove the pins to let me
stand up. They smile at me and laugh because no words come out of my mouth, only ridiculous sounds.

They stand beside Isaac and I see now he wears a military uniform with a tall hat and bright colors like those they had before the war. I ask him why he is dressed this way and he understands my question. He answers “I am able and I will fight without you.” I ask him what will happen to our mother but now the bed is floating above the water and drifting out to sea and Gittel and Ettel are crying for our father. Isaac says he must continue his work. He stands in front of a radio bigger than a cabinet and he tunes its dials and knobs.

The bed spins and drifts on the water. The pins hold fast and the blanket feels safe but it keeps me from moving it keeps me from paddling or looking around. There is no wind. I now remember someone told me there is a flotilla nearby and I ask if the Aquitania will be there.

Image source:

Aquitania – Library of Congress #LC-D4-22833

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In my dream I am in the round schul and it is old and dark. The chairs and benches are bolted to the floor. Dirt and balls of dust gather around the bolts. I realize I have discussed the chairs before with my father. He told me they came from a subway car of an experimental type never used by the owners.

I walk along the wall some more and I see in the dark the figure of a woman. I imagine it is my mother but it doesn’t look like her. This woman is old and tiny and seems unwell. She tells me there is mud in her stomach. I tell her I will get my beloved father olam haba to help her and she tells me he is no longer inside the synagogue. I remember where the door is and then I am upon it, a small wooden door like the door to a house not very like the door to a synagogue at all.

Outside it is a bright spring day. I can’t see for the sun is in my eyes.

Soon I am walking the street in my town of Sniatyn. I know somehow my mother no longer lives in our house, she lives in one of the neighbors houses now. I remember the house but I have never been through the door. It is ordinary and painted white and I wonder how it will feel to be inside. As I walk to it my feet leave the ground, I float and drift in the air and soon I am above the roof tops. I know it will be easy to find my father if I fly and so I learn to move my arms and feet to turn this way and that, the houses pass beneath me faster and faster. I am beset by sadness because I never knew I could fly and I think about how different my life would be if only I had known.

Now I am afraid because I am going higher and I cannot stop myself. I see a big city now, across the river. I don’t why its there because Sniatyn is a small town with nothing around it but hills and the river. I feel a lurch and I begin to fall. It takes a long time but I am calm, I spin and tumble like I am under water. I wonder why I am not worried. I drift toward the city on my way down but I think I am going to fall into the river instead. This is a relief because if I land on the ground I might get hurt but the river is just water and will break my fall. I think I will be safe if I hold my breath.

Image Source: “Sniatyn. Rooftop view. Circa 1910.” from Zwierzanski Website. Original source unknown.

[no October 13 entry; Papa accidentally wrote his October 20 entry on this page]

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It was long ago when I joined Jack and Julius and Nathan on Broome street, we dipped black bread in salt and sipped tea and talked late into the night of girls and our plans and of days to come. They kept leather everywhere, strips on chairs, bolts on their bed and the floor, it was a factory of their own. Jack and Julius always at work at the table, they passed each other tools and dropped rivets into cans and tea cups. Nathan joked would they give us a job when we got back from the war, he said the men at the registration office meant to send us right back to the old country to our old homes.

So much has happened since those endless days can it be I am still the same? What are these days then? They do not seem to me like memories to come.

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For those of you just joining us, the above passage was not written by my grandfather; on days when he hasn’t written in his diary, I often write fictionalized interpretations of what I think might have been on his mind. Try the links below to see what he has to say about some of the major subjects he’s covered:

– “The 20th Century Girl”

– The New York Academy of Music

– B’nai zion, a.k.a. Order Sons of Zion, the fraternal order my grandfather belonged to

– Baseball

– The Capitol Theatre, one of New York’s great movie palaces

– Cars of the 1920’s

– Coney Island

– Calvin Coolidge

– The 1924 Democratic Convention, the longest and most contentious in history and the first to be broadcast live on the radio

– The Brooklyn Dodgers and Ebbets Field

– Fraternal organizations and mutual support societies, a.k.a. landsmanshaftn

– The New York Giants, 1924 pennant winners

– Keren Hayesod

– Silent Movies (1924 was a great year for movie lovers like my grandfather; several monumental films including The Thief of Badgad, The Ten Commandments, Sherlock, Jr., and D.W. Griffith’s America were out that year. I’m not sure if he saw any of those, but I do know he saw at least The Song of Love, The Unknown Purple, The White Sister with Lillian Gish, and A Woman of Paris, Charlie Chaplin’s first serious directorial effort.)

– The Metropolitan Opera

– Papa’s Father’s Injury and Death

– Prohibition

– Prospect Park

– Early radio (Papa was an early radio adopter and frequently wrote about what he heard on New York stations like WEAF and WNYC)

– Sniatyn, Papa’s Ukrainian home town (part of Austro-Hungary when he left in 1913)

– The New York Subway

– Telephones in 1924

– Tenement life

– Woodrow Wilson

– The New York Yankees

– Yom Kippur

– Zionist Organization of America

[no entry]

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Today I shaved my face and watching the soap and water flow down the drain the blues came over me. The blues hide and wait and find me at the most unexpected times, when I wash and when see the book man with his stack of books and when I see someone alone at a counter with a plate of eggs.

Even this afternoon as I left the factory I felt a sadness, of course I will be there on Monday but I wished to embrace each worker as if they were never to return.

Thought again of dear H. Eisenkraft taken from us so young and remembered him during evening prayers.

<!– Note: The above photo shows Hyman Eisenkraft (some time between 1910 and 1913) a beloved cousin whose untimely death Papa mentioned on June 16. –>

home

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In my dream I lose count of my fingers and I am sure I’ve lost one. I look down at the ground and I tilt forward and my feet rise into the air and I float head first through the crowd on the sidewalk. My hair is long and reaches to the ground, I can make it move as it sweeps along. I cannot make a rope of it, I can only make the end curl and turn and dance, my hair cannot feel the pavement as a frozen fingertip cannot feel a key.

“Your pal Esther will help” says the strange woman. She stands in front of me and her face is gray and beautiful, I can only see her if I look from the corner of my eye, if I look at her she turns, her face becomes jagged. I have not met her but I know her voice, high and fast, the night voice of the lady downstairs.

I must tell her I have no friend named Esther but I see now the ground is covered in coins. I try to put my feet on the ground so I can pick them up but I float still, I try to grab the coins with my hair but I can only touch them lightly and the coins do not move. “Perhaps your pal can help you grow coins” says the lady downstairs and I know she is right and I also know she does not know how.

[no entry today]

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At the Dist. I was surprised to find H. in the meeting room when I arrived. Jack brought her a chair explaining the committee meeting and as she began to sit she saw me enter. She stood back up and she smiled and took my hand and I thought, could this be the same girl? She told me she had moved from the Bronx where some new arrivals some cousins from the old country had filled every last chair and pillow and now stayed with her aunt in Williamsburg where she had her own room. That is what she said, “filled every last chair and pillow.” Jack made a joke and said her cousins might be more comfortable back in steerage and H. turned and thanked him for the chair and sat and invited me to sit next to her.

My days of machine work are etched into my hands, I thought of this as she held a cigarette with her soft fine fingers. I am head of the publicity subcommittee for the Dist. winter ball, this means I must see to the printing of our handbook and circulars and also to secure a speaker for the dedication. I thought of Ab. Goldberg, it would be interesting to hear him explain his latest activities in Germany so I will approach him when he returns. H. volunteered for my subcommittee.