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Papa covered a lot of ground in 1924, visiting every corner of the city from Brooklyn to the Bronx (occasionally on the same day).
The map below shows some of the places he hit throughout the year. (Click on a marker to read more about any location, and zoom and drag as you would with any Google map.) I’ll keep adding new locations, so stay tuned.
My grandfather, Harry Scheurman, kept a diary in 1924 when he was twenty-nine years old. He had been in America for 11 years, but much of his family still lived in the central European, Jewish ghetto of his youth. He was a garment worker, union activist and Zionist fundraiser. He was also unmarried and terribly lonely.
I’ve always found his diary to be fascinating reading, and I’ve always wanted to share it with people who might find it interesting. So, each day in 2007 (*2008 update below) I’ll transcribe and post each day’s corresponding entry, and I’ll also annotate with contextual details about his life, historical details about the social, political and cultural subjects in circulation that year, and whatever thoughts and feelings his words bring to mind.
Since I have a day job and don’t pretend to be a great researcher, I invite contributions from anyone who’s interested in the subjects I’ll touch on, including immigrant life in the 1920’s, the rise of radio as a social force, the history of the Jewish labor movement, the history of New York-based Zionist organizations (particularly the Order of the Sons of Zion) Jewish ghetto life in Austro-Hungary (especially Snyatyn) New York baseball in the 1920’s, Coney Island of the 1920’s, Calvin Coolidge and the 1924 Presidential campaign. Feel free to add comments to any post, or if you’re interested in getting more involved please write to papasdiary ‘at’ gmail.com with the word “Contribution” in the subject line.
Finally, if you’re just getting started with Papa’s Diary Project, here are a few good subjects to check out:
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January 5, 2008 Update: Papa’s Letters and more
Now that I’ve posted every entry from Papa’s 1924 diary, I’m going to start posting the letters he wrote to my grandmother (a.k.a. “Nana”) during their five-year courtship. My mother had believed these letters lost until I found them in her attic just recently. I think I’ve got them all, though the ribbon with with Nana tied them together seems to be gone.
As of now I’ve only read a few of the letters, but it’s clear that, not surprisingly, they constitute a different sort of narrative than Papa’s diary, less rich in the details of day-to-day life but no less intimate and revealing. I expect to post about one a week throughout 2008, and I’ll also be posting updates to my comments on Papa’s diary since there’s still plenty of research to do. I’ve gotten great contributions from readers over the last year and hope to get more, so if you see anything you’d like to chime in on (our ever-expanding list of subjects might help you get acquainted with the things we’ve covered so far) please send me an e-mail or drop a comment on the appropriate post.
If you’re reading this you can assume that any spelling or punctuation errors appear as they do in my grandfather’s original diary entries. I’ve dispensed with the “[sic]” notation, which I find distracting. Similarly, after some trial and error I’ve decided to include line breaks as they appear in his entries, because his sentences don’t flow quite right when I mess around with them.
I’ve also tried to include struck-through words when possible. Please just remember that struck-through text has a different connotation in the age of blogging, as it’s a humorous device used to convey what the author really means or would like to write (e.g. “President Bush delivered his pack of lies State of the Union address today”). This is obviously not what my grandfather had in mind when striking through text, but I still think it’s valuable and interesting to examine his mistakes and changes. For that reason, I will also indicate when he’s inserted text by bracketing the text [like this].
I do have some questions as to whether his punctuation and capitalization are in line with the style of the day, are personal choices, or are by-products of the collision between his old-world education and his adopted language. His English was self-taught (apparently he accomplished this by reading newspapers in the 42nd Street Public Library) but he was intelligent and had a capacity for languages (he grew up speaking six or seven, which was typical and perhaps even necessary for people who grew up on the trade routes between Eastern and Western Europe. ) The overall strength of his writing and penmanship leads me to believe he paid close attention to formalities, but I do see a few habits that I’m curious about, for example:
– He seems to use commas in place of periods a lot, and reserves periods for the end of paragraphs. Was this typical of European educated writers in the 1920’s?
– He never, as far as I can see, used apostrophes. Was this due to expedience, choice or is it simply a mistake? He often leaves periods off the ends of sentences, so perhaps he was just in a hurry.
– When he uses quotation marks, his open quotes appear to the lower left of the first quoted word, and his close quote appear above the last word. This is clearly an early Twentieth Century style, which leads me to believe some of his other punctuation choices are deliberate.
I’ll try to figure this out on my own, but please let me know what you know about this kind of thing.
I frequently revisit posts to add additional thoughts, photos, facts and references as they arrive. Here’s a quick summary. I’ve listed the date of the update first and the date of the original post after that. (Note that all updates aren’t dated — I only started dating my updates a few days into this project and I haven’t been dating them if I add them the same day.)
Updated in February:
3/12 – Mar 8: Added Mom’s comments about the opera
3/10 – Mar 3: Added Time Magazine‘s review of Wild Oranges
3/8 – Feb 22: Reader Dina writes about her own grandfather’s American heroes
3/1 – Feb 28: Mom’s comments on a photo of her family
2/6 – Jan 9: Information on Papa’s status as a Cohen, and why he can’t be near the dead
2/6 – Jan 27: Mom’s comments on Papa and Chinese food
2/4 – Jan 20: Mom’s additions on cousin Ruchale
2/4 – Jan 12: Some information from the New York Times on Cafe Royal
Updated in January:
1/20 – Jan 19: Mom’s comments on Papa
1/14 – Jan 13: Correction and photo of Aunt Clara
1/13 – Jan 12: “Golus” discussion
Jan 1: Comment on Volga boat song; photo of Capitol Theatre
Jan 2: Information about tuberculosis
Jan 3: Quote from feedback about Keren Hayesod
Jan 4: Commentary
Jan 5: Photo of Papa in formal wear; information on “cabinet cards”
Jan 6: Photos of Papa from early 70’s
Jan 7: Information on WEAF
Jan 10: Information on fraternal organizations
Jan 11: Clinton theater background; link to NYT article on movie escapism
Jan 16: Speculation on Papa’s motives
Jan 28: More thoughts on the secular inheritance of religious ideals
It’s about to get harder for me to spend as much time as I’d like on research for this project. That’s why I’m calling on you, my legions of readers — and make no mistake, your numbers are so vast that to keep count takes almost all of my fingers — for research help.
The following list contains the many people, places, organizations, musical references, events and details of New York life that appear in Papa’s diary. If you know about or are interested in any of these subjects, please write to me at papasdiary ‘at’ gmail.com or post comments about them. If you’d really like to dig in to a subject that might require ongoing research or collaboration, let me know and I’ll set up a collaborative document for us to work on.
Note: If you want to delve into anything under a “some information already collected” heading, please let me know and I’ll share with you what I’ve got.
Thanks!
Matt
1/21/07
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Organizations:
Total mysteries:
Some information already collected:
People (many names are incomplete in the diary, but most of these people would be affiliated with B’nai Zion, Keren Hayesod or the Zionist Organization of America):
Total mysteries:
Some information already collected:
President Calvin Coolidge
Places
Total mysteries:
Some information already collected:
Movies and Movie Theaters
Total mysteries:
Some information already collected:
Sports
Some information already collected:
Leisure
General and specific information needed:
Music (history, clips, general background, 1924 prevailing opinion, reviews or performances and recordings):
Opera (history, clips, general background, 1924 prevailing opinion, reviews or performances and recordings):
Radio events and history:
Lifestyle:
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Update 6/18/07:
Reader Ben writes:
In your “Notes on Usage” article, you remark that your grandfather began quotations with quote marks at the bottom of the line. This is the typographic standard for German and, I think, Polish. In computer typography (Unicode especially), they’re referred to as “low-nine quotes”
Ben is working on some software to facilitate manuscript transcription. You can read about it at his blog, manuscripttranscription.blogspot.com.
I’ve had two separate sites geared toward lovers of journals — not the contents, but the books themselves — link to me since I started this project. I figure there must be more people out there who’d like it if I posted a little more about it, so here goes:
Papa’s diary is about six inches high by three-and-a-half inches wide. Its cover is a deep maroon and seems to have resisted aging and fading:
The words “National Diary 1924” are lightly embossed on the diagonal across the cover in an all-caps font I’m not familiar with:
The cover appears to be constructed of linen-lined cardboard material, and shows some wear and tear around the corners and binding:
The cream-colored pages show some browning along the edges, but remain resilient and not at all brittle.
A calendar for the year 1924 is printed on the inside cover. It looks like Papa practiced his signature a couple of times here (they read “A.H. Scheurman” because his given name was Avraham Hesh, though later he just signed his name as “Harry”.) It looks like the book cost 59 cents, as indicated by a price hand-written in the upper left. (Apologies for the blurry image — I can’t get this page to sit flat on my scanner without damaging the diary’s binding.)
A 1925 calendar is printed on the inside back cover. Papa’s scratched a few figures here, along with what appears to be a phone number:
A chart of 1924 postal rates is printed on the last page, along with a little more of Papa’s arithmetic:
A printed message, prompting the diary’s owner to order a new diary for 1925, appears at the bottom of the November 1 page:
A reminder appears at the bottom of the December 1 page:
Alas, the order number this message refers to is not anywhere to be found, nor are any indications of the diary’s manufacturer.
Papa’s Diary contains frequent references to music and popular culture, especially when he discusses the programming he listened to on the radio. Here are a few sound and video files from the Web that might help us understand what he saw and heard himself.
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January 1 entry:
The Volga Boat Song was played in the New Years Eve concert Papa attended. Here’s a version from Radio Blog Club:
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Papa recounts the story of a young Jewish woman who plays Schubert’s Serenade for immigration officials in order to qualify for an artist’s exception to the Jewish immigrant quota laws. It’s here at Radio Blog Club:
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Papa describes how he listened to a boxing match in which Jewish boxer Abe Goldstein took the bantamweight title. We don’t have any footage of Golstein’s fight, but YouTube does have this 1922 fight featuring Benny Leonard, who was perhaps the most famous Jewish fighter:
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“Always blues, blues, even the radio is sending me blues through the air,” said Papa one rainy April day. We can’t be sure what he listened to, but here’s 1923 Bessie Smith recording of “Down Hearted Blues” from Last.fm:
And here’s a recording of “Who’s Sorry Now” by the Original Memphis Five from Archive.org:
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Papa frequently says he listens to an ensemble called The Gypsy String Orchestra on the radio, and while I haven’t yet found one of their recordings, this 1914, Gypsy-influenced Berkes Bela tune from archive.org might be in the ballpark:
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Papa lists a number of songs the Gypsy String Orchestra played on the radio that day, among them:
“Indian Love Lyrics,” which surely sounded a lot like this 1921 Edison Diamond Disc recording from the Library of Congress:
A “Gypsy Chardash” along the lines of this 1920’s-ish recording by Bibor Olga Ciganyzenekara (Olga Bibor’s Gypsy Ensemble) at Archive.org:
Papa didn’t mentioned the “Gypsy Love Song” specifically, but I thew in this 1923 recording of it, also available at Archive.org:
On September 12, Papa used the phrase “Flaming Youth,” which was the title of a popular movie starring Colleen Moore. Here’s a video of Moore, who became a huge star after her appearance in Flaming Youth:
Once in a while, when Papa doesn’t write in his diary for a day or two, I fill in the blanks with fictional episodes or dream sequences. I thought it would be fun to use the following Felix the Cat cartoon to illustrate a dream on October 12.
On November 5th, Papa saw Maria Jeritza in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Tannhauser. The following clip features Jeritza singing an aria from that very opera:
And here’s a video of Herbert Von Karajan conducting the opening of Tannhauser:
And here’s the finale of Tannhauser from archive.org (this link will open a new window)
Papa saw Madame Butterfly on November 22nd with Beniamino Gigli and and Antonio Scotti. Here’s a clip of Gigli singing “O Solo Mio”:
And here’s a clip of Scotti singing “Tosca”:
Here’s a 1918 recording, via archive.org, of Frances Alda singing from Madama Butterfly.
On November 24t, Papa saw Mefistofele at the Met with the great Chaliapin. Here’s a clip of Chaliapin singing “Ave Signori (Hail, Sovereign Lord)” from Mefistofele:
Papa hit the Met again on December 4th, where he saw the venerable Giovanni Martinelli in Carmen. Here’s a clip from archive.org of Martinelli singing La fleur que tu m’avais jetee from Carmen.
More opera on December 5th, and this time it’s Martha at the Met. Here’s the great Giovanni Martinelli, who Papa had seen the previous day in Carmen, singing the well known aria “M’appari tutt’amor” from Martha:
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I got rather wistful after I posted the last diary entry on December 31, 2007, and I wound up putting this video together and posting it the next day. It’s just a slide show with pictures of Papa at various stages of his life, set to a song called “Indian Love Lyrics” that Papa heard on the radio (as mentioned above) on April 28, 1924.
I’m not exactly sure how to get trackbacks working on Blogger, so I’ve just assembled this list of links about Papa’s Diary Project. Thanks to everyone who’s shown an interest.
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– Family Tree Magazine interviewed me for a piece in their May 2008 issue about preserving old diaries. Here’s a PDF, posted with permission.
– Here’s a link from a blog called “lfstyle.com“.
– The New York Times City Section published an interview with me about Papa’s Diary Project entitled “1924, Through an Ancestor’s Eyes” on October 14, 2007
– familyoralhistory.us, a site dedicated to the digital preservation of family history, gave us this shout-out on August 31, 2007.
– Here’s a nice little mention in a post called Blogs worth knowing about from Digitization 101.
Loho10002, a Lower East Side information site, mentioned us in their “Linkage” recommendations on August 23rd, 2007.
– Here’s a link from a Dodgers fan and history site called “The Trolley Dodger.”
– My friends Yishane and Ray gave me a little shout-out in late May on their personal blog, feebo.com.
– Here’s a piece I wrote for the Spring 2007 issue of a Jewish students’ magazine called “New Voices.” The headline editor made a teensy mistake (Papa’s diary was written in the 20’s, not the 30’s) but otherwise I’m happy with it.
– The May 4, 2007 issue of the Jewish Daily Forward featured an article about Papa’s Diary Project called “Dear Diary: Back in Time“
– April 18th, 2007: A Russian Web site called Booknik wrote a long post about Papa’s Diary Project. I had no idea what it said at first, but my heroic, Russian-speaking friend Alla recently translated the comments. Here’s what she had to say:
Matt, she called the article The story of one blog from 1924.
Her name is Anna Shkolnik, and she writes absolutely beautifully. She perfectly translated the diary. She used very intelligent language and tone similar to Osip Mandelshtum’s memoirs. I don’t have too much time to translate her comments perfectly, but I’ll do my best to quickly translate it word by word. It’s even better, since you’ll imagine some stranger-woman with heavy Russian accent, who really got into your story:
After she quoted some phrases from the diary, she wrote:
Harry was not just a worker, trade union activist and a member of …”Sons of …”. now Bnai Brith. He was very lonely and sensitive man, who tried to save as much as possible to weekly send some help to his family that had to stay in Europe and suffered a lot of hardships. There is a special place in his diary where he shares his dreams about one very special girl, whom he’s willing to wait all his life. There is also some observations in his diary about the lifestyle of his American relatives. This takes the majority of pretty old yellowish pages, wrapped by linen mahagony color book cover.
Then, she perfectly translates your comments in the diary after Jan. 1st, 1924 post:
Matt comments practically every event, mentioned in his grandfather’s memoirs, which changes the diary’s genre itself and transforms it into the ”encyclopedia of every day things”
The references and photos, as well as quotes from the newspapers of that time,. gently add to the town’s view, sounds, penetrating to the new yorkers’ ears, smells and other things of that time reality, forever lost for the future generations. For example, on April 17th, grandpa didn’t leave any diary posts, and Matt is worried (what could happen?). Perhaps, he was listening to his favored radio and and decided not to write that day. By the way, among the the headlines that caught his eye at the moment, there was one about Russian. This is New York TImes.
Just like any other man who is in love, Matt talks about his granddad using such touching tone that it becomes very contagious and the reader of the diary is picking it up. It looks like Matt’s blog has more visitors than you could imagine. If publish this book and base it on the diary, he could include the comments to add many new details and information about New York during the 20th, in the best traditions of literature network, as well as the comments that simply inspire and motivate Matt to continue what he’s started.
And then she writes:
Booker (in Russian means person who can’t stop reading) is the website’s name. There is a comment on the bottom of the page:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
We barely forced to leave the Diary alone and get away from it, to tell you, folks, about this wonderful man (you!). Here is some terms and names of the things that Matt is trying to find – here are the list of the terms and names, that Matt coule not define or find anywhere on the web. Do you find here in the list anything familiar – names, people?
– The brilliantly-named Jewcy.com referred to Papa’s Diary Project back in March after I wrote to ask them a question about matzoh production.
– Here’s a reference from January 2007 on a journal-oriented blog called Duc N. Ly
– Thanks to a referral from my cousin Joy, a notebook-oriented site called notebookism wrote a post about Papa’s Diary Project almost as soon as I started it.
This is the full list of subject tags for Papa’s Diary Project as of July 4, 2007. I’ve been making up my tags as I go, so this list may seem a bit inconsistent. Still, I think it’s useful.
– 1924
– audio
– baseball
– birthday
– blues
– breindel
– Cars
– Clara
– Coolidge
– Coq d’Or
– dating 3
– Death
– dentist
– dodgers
– family
– Federation of American Zionists
– funeral
– giants
– Gitel
– Golus
– H.S.
– hadassah
– Halutzim
– holidays
– Imber
– Isaac
– Julius
– lower east side tenement museum
– Mendel
– mourning
– Movies
– Nettie
– niece
– No Entry
– opera
– Passover
– Phil
– Poetry
– politics
– Purim
– radio 2
– Rothblum
– Ruppin
– schvitz
– shadchan
– Shapiro
– Shevuoth
– shiva
– sister
– sniatyn
– Snyatyn
– subway
– Theater
– Tillie
– transit
– trolley
– Tsardash
– update
– yankees
– Yivo
– Zionism
I’ve tried to make the
mass meeting a success
my efforts brought a big
crowd, the speakers were
brilliant and the Cantor was
wonderful but got only
a handfull of members.
I have worked it all single-
handed, but — I am not
discouraged, I will carry on
After the meeting I
spend a pleasant hour
at Shulem’s in the company
of Ab. Goldberg, Dr. Schechter
and Mr. Graf.
——————
Papa had been worried about the success of this meeting, which was meant to revive a flagging chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, for a while. He’d considered giving up on his efforts if the meeting wasn’t well attended, but I’m sure only the sight of a completely empty room would have punctured his idealism that decisively. (To chase a dream New York is to deny its folly. So it always was, so it shall ever be.)
Papa passed his “pleasant hour” at Sholem’s with Abraham Goldberg who, as mentioned before, was a prominent member of the Z.O.A. I don’t know who Dr. Schechter and Mr. Graf were (for a brief moment I wondered if Dr. Schechter could have been Solomon Schechter himself, but since Solomon died in 1909 it would have been decidedly unpleasant, not to mention illegal, to spend an hour in his company).
It surprised me to read about the cantor’s presence at Papa’s meeting, but I know I really shouldn’t be. I also know I’m going to be surprised by this kind of thing again and again in the course of this project. I think it’s due to my own lack of spiritual attachment to Judaism (or anything else). While I’m aware of religion’s effects on people’s politics and daily lives, I know no more about what it’s like to be a person guided by spiritualism than I know what it’s like to be a dolphin guided by sonar. Papa was an observant, learned Jew, he saw himself as one of the Children of Israel and, accordingly, saw Zionism as a way home for himself and for everyone he loved. Zionism was an extension of his Judaism, so why wouldn’t he arrange for a cantor to sing at a Zionist meeting? But still…
If I seem to be struggling with something obvious, it’s because I’m so different from Papa in this way. It’s food for thought: Part of the reason I’m doing this project is to comprehend, as an adult, those qualities in Papa that seemed so transcendent to me as a child. But certainly Papa’s spiritual beliefs were greatly responsible for that transcendence, for the warmth he exuded, for keeping him intact throughout the trials of his youth. Whatever I find of him in myself, then, has at least some of its roots in spiritualism. Yet I’ve inherited only the effects, not the cause; spiritualism created what psychology perpetuated. Maybe it’s just another face of assimilation.
Update 1/28
I think there’s a parallel between the process of religious tradition giving way to inherited behavior and the evolution of the Jewish fraternal system, which I’ve talked about in other posts. The fraternal system provided a formal way to let immigrants cement their relationships, through ritual, on American soil with people from their original countries; they could take comfort in their old traditions while starting to build new ones. As the immigrant communities developed more home-grown support systems and found support in their new country’s agencies (labor unions, government services, etc.) the importance of ritual and fraternal bonding lessened. What older generations sought through the fraternal system — security, a sense of responsibility to others, a feeling of mutual support — remained, but in another form. Subsequent generations still pursued the qualitative equivalent of what their forbears taught them to value, only in different ways; what one generation pursued through ritual, another perpetuated through more secular means. Isn’t this a bit like what I was saying above about how my grandfather’s admirable qualities — his diligence, his respectful nature, his generosity — inspired by the spiritual side of Judaism, might make it to subsequent generations in the absence of religious belief?
