The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 24, 1926, Page 11

a es Pe oe Se See Ce oe we — oS ee wew Nie SOR acne an SS 2 ewe ae i —_ Extracts from Je Ane 10TH: Well, little diary, here we are en- route to New York for a grand vacation, combined with a little business on the side. One needs these little excursions even if one is divine. I get so bored with my own heaven sometimes I could positively ex- plode. Some day I’m going to smash the faces of a few of these stupid, fat, lazy, respectable angels of mine. They’re too damn regular for words—like a lot of cows. There’s not a real man or woman in heaven. . . Well, little diary, let’s not get all sweated wp; after all, aren’t we on our way to New York to raise a little Hell? MARCH 11TH: Didn’t sleep well last night. The comet on which I am riding to earth was blocked by some enormous balloon filled with hot air. We all turned out to investigate and the conductor, with a lantern, went up close. He came back and said the balloon was a speech by Mussolini. One of the guards stuck a pin in the speech and it burst with a loud bang. ere was a horrible smell, too, like something that od a long time ago. I like Mussolini but why does thing about him smell.go bad? ‘MARCH 13TH: In sight of land. The Statue of Uberty and the skyscrapers on the horizon, I hope to @d I won’t have much trouble getting past Ellis Is- imd. That. quota law is so strict, it frightens me. Vhen I get back to heaven, I’m going to agitate for aquota law against Americans. MARCH 15TH: The inspector passed me ali right, one of them had the nerve to suggest that I ought bathe oftener and learn to speak English. After these years to be insulted by a jazbo in blue uni- m! I told him I bathed when I pleased, and that dish was good enough for me in the Garden of nm before he was ever born and it was still good gh for me in America. He sneered a Nordic sneer d then asked me my business and what I intended do in New York. I told him I was a marriage ker, a matzos salesman, a Rabbinical wine vendor. a few other things like undertaker, heavenly real tate agent, pork and ham specialist, hair and beard mic manufacturer and consultant to Rabbis and cloth- bosses. What was I going to do in New York? Little diary, afraid I told a lie. I said I-was going to visit my loved son, Abe Cahan of the Forwards. This got me », but, you know the truth, little diary. Well, all’s i in Jove and wat, ° {5 °o" SC Og; MARCH 16TH: ‘Well, well, here we are safe on the t Side again. It looks about the same; the push- rts, the tenements, and the sweat baths are still e, and there is just as much jabbering as ever. No e can ever tame my Jews. They will always be gaining, shouting, pushing, fighting; worshiping me the synagogues on Saturday and running profitable veatshops the rest of the week: MARCH 17TH: Little diary, I’m wrong. The Jews ‘e not the same. I had my conference today with ose Who sent for me, the Kosher Kongress of Kon- mtional Rabbis, and the situation is bad. The work- g¢ class Jews are not what ‘they used to be. They ve organized in big unions; they refuse to go to 1 the meeting after that piece of dirty work. It was the mixture of mayorship and old age rat did it. ‘HERE was a young girl who was pretty and * who attracted all the boys. And there was youth who was so handsome and strong, the 1oughts of the girls flew after him like but- rflies. But the girl and boy never noticed the st, but only each other. They completed ich other, adorned each other, were made for wh other. 2 ‘ Nobody was surprised when the young man, yruced up and smiling, went to the mayor to wk the hand of his daughter. Of course, there juld have been better matches for her, in a aterial sense; he was only a farmer lad. But », was healthy and a hard worker. ~ Zveryone expected him to say yes, and the ung people smiled the same smile together, ley were so sure. . And then he said no! _ He said no when it would have been so na- \ral to say yes, and when everything told him , if oa the garden, the sunshine, the e6Z6, » in. person whispered it to him. — The reason? ntti His first argument Was. “It is not to be ought of.” And his’ second and his third ere to shout it louder. : ver It seemed impossible to make him recon- der. All the more because he was mayor, . The two young people were stupified and iffered. At the foot of the staircase they et» He looked at her. Happiness flew away; but not entirely, because it was still she, and] As Selected by Michael Gold. Synagogue and they reffise to become millionaires themselves or help others to become millionaires, They are rebels, Bolsheviks. I thought Russia was the only place these things were happening. I'd give up that country long ago, but here it breaks out in Amer- ica, And with so much loose money lying around, too! I can't understand it. I must get on the job at once, MARCH 19TH: I went to see Sasha’ Zimmerman, Louis Hyman, Julius Portnoy, Rose Wortis and other leaders of that bunch of rebel Jews who call them- selves the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Would you believe it, little diary, they re- fused to take me seriously. Sasha Zimmerman, a raw, beardless youth, looked at me quietly with his blue eyes and Smiled: “Well,.Grandpop,” he had the au- dacity to say, “are you still tottering around? [{ thought You were killed in the war." Someone else said, “The last time I saw this old faker he was scabbing.” Even Rose Wortis, who is a woman and should have been at least womanly.and kind to my gray hairs, munched at an apple and read a paper called the Freiheit. “No, I’m too busy to listen,” she said, hardly looking up. “The union ig more important than Jehovah. It means life and you mean poverty, stagnation, death.” I pleaded, I argued, I wept, I implored. I talked to them like a sorrowful fafher. “Be good, my children, and all will be forgiven,” I said. “Give up these dan- gerous ideas; come back to the taleth, the pkylacteries, |- the matzos, the synagogue, your own nation, your own people. Come back to Jehovah, your poor old deserted father.” ; “Jehovah and the sweatshop, sneered one of them brutally. “Jehovah and the fat Jewish clothing bosses,” said another. They did not heed my tears or my plead- ings; they were hard as flint. I must see Abe Cahan tomorrow for some consolation. MARCH 20TH: Abe Cahan hasn’t much to offer in the way of consolation. “These people are thoroly spoiled and corrupted!” he shouted. “The only way to argue with them ig with a blackjack. They are not Jews; they are Bolsheviks. They should be wiped out! They should be massacred; someone onght to start 2 pogrom against them; I would be giad to jein it! To hell with them, kill them, down with them!” and so on and so on.):Before he was thru; he was almost rav- ing. I got him a glass of Water andidriedste chang the subject. When he calmed down he interviewed me for the Forwards. He got me to say I was a Zion- ist and that I believed in the A, F. of L. Also that it was true that he had helped me write the Bible. He is such a skillful interviewer that I agreed with all these statements, tho, really I wrote the Bible myselt. Well, let it pass, little diary; there’s enough glory to go around and after all, I am a stranger in this town and Abe Cahan is a powerful friend for even a Je- hovah to have. Let me whisper a secret, tho, little diary: I am not going to let him into heaven. I’m afraid he'll want to run the place or claim that he made the world, just as he claims he made the radical move- she was still there. Happiness, which is so vast, is so fragile. And.he told himself, while he looked at her big eyes and little nose and soft hair, that simple beauty is an exquisite thing. To hold out his arms, to take her in his arms . . « . Those things you can do, but you may not. Never to touch her! The darling! He bent his head,and thru tears he prayed to his little madonna. THAT'S the way the Crier made the last part of his life into a contradiction of the first part. And as little things are images of big- ger things, he in his little village is an example of the sale of conscience. In him you see all the well-known renegades whose names are printed ten times a day in the newspapers: Mr. Brown, Mr. Jones, Mr. Rob- inson, and all the Robespierres of opportunism, — all the Cyranos of the established order of hings. He is. well-fixed. He is at home. And noth- ing mars the serenity of the magnificent “There is no case in history,” he says, lick- ing his chops, ‘in which, after a certain age, the most audacious do not become calm and reasonable.” seetia' tt NP cd eet And what he says is true also of the heart, of the pity that you have (and which opens you widest to life) because to understand the things of the heart, you must see what is not, . hovah’ s Diary ment in New York. MARCH 21ST: Saw Ben Gold today. He is lead- ing a strike of the furriers, He’s just as bad as the others and even more cheerful about !t. He had the nerve to offer me a dollar for some grub; pretended that he thought I was a bum ‘at first. When I told him who I was, he burst into hearty laughter. “Glad to meet you,” he said, shaking my hand violently. “Oft- en heard about you, grandpa,” (how dare they call me, Jehovah, such a familiar nickname?) “Yes, when I was a kid, Grandpa! Sit down. How’s business? Say, Grandpa, we could use you right now. Some of our pickets are arrested and we need a good character witness.” ® I told him I wouldn’: think of such a thing, He laughed louder than ever, “thal’s right, Grand- pa,” he roared, “don’t Jose your good old respecta- bility. Remember you h’yve your position to maintain. Well, how’s conditions up in heaven? Have the an- gels organized yet? What are their hours and wages now? You lost a lot of work when Russia struck against your shop, didn’t you? Well, cheer up, Grand- pa. We'll take care of you when all your business is gone everywhere in the world. We’ll give you a job as janitor of one of our union halls.” And so on and so on, laughing all the time. My God, I never heard such talk. He was hopeless; this Ben Gold will be a Bolshevik to the end of his days. MARCH 30TH: Abe Cahan is still the only friend I have. He arranged a banquet of socialist labo lead- ers, labor bank presidents, rabbis, Zionists, passover wine bootleggers, and chorus girls from the Second avenue theaters, each weighing 300 pounds—real old- fashioned Jewish maidens; it did my heart good to see them. Diamonds shone, and wondcrful speeches were made, Everybody praised me and said I was the cat’s pajamas, as the Americans put it. I got up and agreed. It was just like the olf Bible days when Moses was my deputy sliferiff. Everyone praised me then. APRIL 1ST: I am so weary of trying to fix up this revolutionary mess here, I think I will give it up and just enjoy myself the rest of my vacation. APRIL 2ND: Picked up a nice chicken on Second avenue and asked her would she like to be the Mom- mer of a little Messiah. She slapped my face. and went looking for a cop. God, I wish I were back in Ral¢stine: /Them were the days. Mary wasn’t ptnek; ; up like these Second Avenuers. d+ pew APRIL 5TH: Drank a lot of Kosher wine last night and have got an awful kosher headache, Think I'll pack my grip and beat it home. They left the earth too soon. Na, I’ve lost some of my power. I’m getting old; these people in New York are too much for me. But dear Abe Cahan, I'll never forget how good he’s been. If he didn’t try to be such a boss; but I’m afraid I simply won’t be able to let him into heaven. APRIL 10TH: Well, we're off! Choo-choo! There goes the Stateu of LibertX. What a Jewish nose the lady has. I never noticed it before! I'll bet Ben Gold has been doing something to her, the scoundrel! and the heart must really work and make a new thing each time and not a copy. And thus he is like John and Mary and Peter and Paul, who after having understood, mis- understood, and after having found the secret of loving, lose it without knowing it. “Yes, my poor friend, what do you want?” “Yes, that would be too beautiful.” , Yes, whatever you Say, the old are men go- ing down hill. They become weaker, and then they haven’t strengthto recognize the new, to love what they will not last to see; they let the first sophistry trip them up, they don’t dig into circumstances, they don’t resist the press- ure of the immediate. They return to child- hood, they return to their formation. You can Say.as much as you please: “I shall not change.” You might as well say when you look in the mirror, that your face) won’t change. © Koaaey att Is there a poor traitor waiting im every. | one of us? Or does death creep into life bes: forehand? And are many men already dead, tho they still have a long road to go from their home to the cemetery? Alas! Say “afis” for the torture of slow- ness. But don’t say it, because there is still something left of even vanished rebellions, be- cause to tell the truth about life is always to: create the world. Something remains, sown im’ the wide nourishing earth that we call'the ped- ple. That is why, thru time, what must be: done will be done, by the force of things and by the aid of man. _'THE END. af ——— 2 es