David Meets Lena
Leah reasoned with David. “There is no need for you to remain here as we are now making a comfortable living and there is enough quarreling without your presence.”
David therefore decided to shift for himself and he struck out for the “wild and woolly west.” As his money was limited he only went as far as Chicago. For a long time his conscience troubled him over desecrating the Sabbath, one of the cardinal tenets of Judaism and also one of his religious principles. But unless he yielded and broke the commandment he could find no work in any desirable shop.
Here we see the constant binary in the author’s mind: religious loyalty versus economic advancement.
Distant pastures looked greener and David decided to go farther, but his great handicap was lack of funds. His plans were frustrated and long distance was denied to him. When he reached Minneapolis, he was stranded financially, so he decided to make Minneapolis his new home. He went to work for a man named Krueger. Mr. Krueger and his wife were very conscientious people and he remained with them for about ten months. During that time he saved some money and opened a shop for himself, and it was there he met the comely Lena.
Based on my own observations as a classroom teacher of twenty years, navigating U.S. socio-cultural expectations and figuring out where to yield to them is a profound source of tension within immigrant families. Young people tend to suss out the way things work pretty quickly and simply begin to adapt, while their parents, almost without exception, struggle terribly, especially if they resist the language. David has actually recorded some details of the family’s adjustment in his Diary when he refers to his sisters’ desire to buy “respectable” (read “fashionable”) clothes, and his own conscious decision to set the traditional practice of Judaism aside to work on Saturdays.
Lena Laser was quite an attractive damsel. She had a comely head set on a plump body. Her complexion was clear and pure white with a touch of warm color that showed her to be thoroughly healthy. She had a pretty mouth and a radiant smile. Her lips curved prettily and her long, thick golden hair reached to her waistline. She did it up prettily in plaited braids.
Lena had come to America from Kovno [Kaunas], Lithuania, with her four cousins and [currently] lived in St. Louis, Missouri with an older sister, Yette, and her husband. Lena had been invited to come and live with them [there], but the girl could not endure the actions of her brother-in-law [Simon Shallett]. He was a large rawboned man whose cheekbones protruded in his ruddy face. His large head was covered with a mass of auburn hair and his beard was of a bright reddish hue. He was very passionate and worshipped his wife.
Long thick golden hair doesn’t sound too Jewish! I think this is one of the rare times when he says something pleasant about Lena.
As to David’s description of Lena, my mother suggests that part of the resentment toward Helen later was because she was not blond like her mother and sister.
In his joyous moments he was kindhearted and ready to do almost anything he could for them, but in a fit of anger he would attack his wife for the slightest show of nonsense, which led to many domestic tragedies. He was learned in Talmudic lore and delighted in expounding his knowledge in public, among friends, at a birth or a wedding. He was a ready entertainer. The expressions of good humor, pride and jealousy in his steel gray eyes had a powerful attraction.
Lena was fond of walking with David on Nicollet Avenue or promenading down to Bridge Square and over the old suspension bridge. Occasionally during the summer they took a car ride to Minnehaha Falls where they sat and watched the endless sheet of water pouring over the high crest of the rock with the sun shining and bespangling it with myriads of brilliant colors. Lena used to tell David of her relatives and of an uncle who was a great Rabbi and another who was a shochet [kosher butcher] and what great dignified men they were.
Lena did not know that people ought to understand each other thoroughly. There was a wholesome look in her clear eyes when she spoke to David, not that she had first hand knowledge of love or life. It was a home to which she aspired. She was tired of staying with her sister whose husband was a fanatical and quarrelsome man. She yearned for a home of her own, be it ever so humble.
She was a splendid housekeeper, always neat and tidy. Her aprons, though of the cheapest material, always looked bright and were cleanly starched. Her cooking and preparing of dishes would satisfy the most fastidious epicure. She was clever at dressmaking and her fingers were deft at the finest embroidery. At lacemaking she showed her highest skill. What could David do but propose to such an ideal girl? They were married on May 11, 1887.
“Lena did not know” means what? Does he mean that they jumped into marriage and he is blaming her?
Right, what about David? Evidently he didn’t understand her thoroughly!
This is where the patronizing tone regarding Lena begins — from her first mention. The first time I read the Diary, I was fascinated by David’s story first and foremost. What strikes me strongly now is David’s perspective; he was hardly more modern in his views about women than his grandfather, Yanke Hennes. Lena is a “comely head set on a plump body” and a good housekeeper. This is the woman he fell in love with. But then he seems to backtrack, almost, as if denying that his “choice” was sound. If he had wished for a true meeting of minds in a spouse, it’s pretty clear that he forgot about this detail during their courtship.
There followed the first crisis of passionate, youthful rebellion when David was in intense pain and forlorn. When one marries, he likes someone he can talk to and listen to after a day’s excitement and business cares. Unfortunately Lena was lacking here. She was narrow and fanatical and all of David’s efforts to educate her, even to providing a teacher for her, were of no avail. David was forced to adopt silence as his creed, a creed that was not at all to his liking.
A letter came from his mother asking what he could do for [his sister] Jennie, who was a budding young woman. David invited her to come and make her home with him and Lena.
Jennie, the oldest of the girls, was quite tall. She possessed a slender waistline and carried her head erect in military fashion. Her oval olive-tinted face was slightly tinted with nature’s pink blush. Her large brown eyes were sharp and penetrating. Her dark hair was done up in a braided coil and her manner was conceited and snobbish. She had a high opinion of herself, and was quite an efficient worker and possessed a domineering disposition.
While visiting with her brother David, Jennie met young Benjamin Marienhoff, whom she married after a brief courtship. He was an aggressive businessman with a narrow and selfish inclination. He indulged in clubs and social parties at home, which also were a delight for Jennie. Jennie had no regard for any of her kin and had nothing to do with her poor relatives. Save for a few friends chosen from among the three-ball fraternity [sic], whose reputation was rather questionable, she had no friends.
Life proved to be far from a bed of roses for Jennie. With all her comforts her life was marred with sadness. When her oldest boy was about three years old she went out promenading one day, leaving the child at home. He accidentally set fire to his own clothes and before any help could reach him he was scorched beyond medical help and died in great agony.
Passionate rebellion against his own marriage? How can she be ideal in one paragraph and fanatical in the next paragraph? Narrow and fanatical means too religious? But David presents his own character as having been very religious.
From what my mom says, Lea was scornful of his religious observances, so perhaps he means fanatical in some other aspect?
This scenario begs the question, what on earth were they talking about during courtship?! But what I find especially troubling is David’s “creed” of silence. Surely the dynamics of their relationship went on to affect their children, including my grandmother. David’s passive-aggressive attitude towards Lena and the implicit criticism, in my view, prompted Lena’s own need for control, which would come in various forms.
Not content with complaining about his own family, David sets his sights on his sister’s family. One has to assume that he regards these blunt appraisals he indulges in as moral sermons to inspire his readers.
I believe "three-ball fraternity" refers to pawnbrokers.
Later Jennie’s many social duties led to the neglect of her children. A boy and a girl, they grew up carefree like other children of the “silk stockings” of that neighborhood. The youngsters played hooky from school and participated in many youthful pranks with other bold children. One day the boys were caught in the meshes of the law.
[David’s second sister] Freda, was sixteen and rather womanly, though not as tall as Jennie. She displayed a look of wistful helplessness, which made kind old ladies shake their heads. She was of an easy-going temperament. Her dark hair was kept closely knotted at the back of her head, her eyes were of a melting brown. Her nose was straight and her mouth showed a whimsical expression. Freda was very kind and sympathetically attached to her mother and always grieved about her hardship. Later she met a traveling salesman, a good steady worker, and after a brief courtship married him.
He is clearly blaming Jennie for being selfish and a bad mother. Yet he doesn’t like Lena for being too fanatical. Is this the constant voice of David, he inconsistently criticizes everyone?
Rose, the third girl, was a bookworm, reading avidly as many books as she could lay her hands on. She took up professional nursing in a San Francisco hospital. There she contracted typhoid fever while on a case and died in 1917.
Margaret, the youngest of the girls, was a hard student with a leaning toward dramatics. She longed for the stage. She left her mother’s home and was never heard from again, disappearing in the great American melting pot.
Brother Herman was a dashing and handsome young man. After his father left home he took care of the family. Later he went to Minneapolis with the family. There he contracted influenza and died of double pneumonia.
Margaret’s mysterious fate no doubt contributed to David’s later attempts to rein in his similarly inclined daughter Helen.
Where are all these sisters living? In Ludington? He pays no attention to where people are wandering... here is the second disappearance from the family; I think that Ben Zion has already disappeared.
Yes, and there will be another eventually as the baby Joe, left with Lena, disappears at some point, not to return for 15 years. Although he is as yet unborn in the Diary timeline, it’s interesting that David doesn’t mention him here.
In 1888 the United States government threw open western land for settlement, offering 120 acres of virgin soil free to anyone who would settle thereon. Ben-Zion was attracted by the possibilities, went to Oregon, and took up a claim with the earnest intention of working it. He found it hard, however, to be alone in his struggle for a new start in life, and hard to adapt himself to the country. Leah had no inclination for pioneering so late in life and no desire to be away from the children and civilization in the wild and woolly west.
Leah took the youngest boy, Joseph, with some of her belongings and went to Oregon to look things over. She was very much disappointed, finding Ben-Zion and his enterprise contrary to her liking. He had a two-room shack, one old horse and wagon, a cow, some chickens and barren soil. These constituted “the farm.” Leah lost heart at the sight of such an outfit and taking the boy she went on to San Francisco, to make her home with Rose who was working in a hospital.
After Leah departed Ben-Zion was heartbroken and embittered, imagining that his wife lost courage and desire to be with him. He sold out his interest and left for an unknown destination.
Where has Ben Zion been, and how long has he been gone at this point?
Apparently gone four years, but we don’t know where; I’m assuming the Midwest.
This is quite fascinating. She wants a stable nest, which he cannot provide her with because he is miserable in business. His Oregon escape could be compared to the Am Olam movement: They were Zionists in non-Palestine space. We find them in North Dakota and elsewhere. However they had a political leftie populist ideology, which Ben Zion does not have. Should we see Leah as a kind of Mother Courage type of heroine, she treks around, her man cannot provide, she is alone in a harsh world... yet she was destined for more! Her demise socially by the disastrous tie to the miskane [a hard luck person] was so typical of the impoverishment of Jews in the Pale of Settlement in the years before and after 1881.
Should we see it as significant that Ben Zion seems to leave twice? What do we make of this marriage?
My ancestor’s attempt to continue his journey further west truly amazes me, and is something I had never heard of before reading the Diary. The four of us writing these commentaries have all ended up on the west coast (San Diego, Oakland, and Seattle) and now we learn that our great-great-grandfather made a similar journey more than 120 years ago! But once again, while Ben-Zion’s fortitude was sufficient to enable him to relocate and start anew, bad luck and perhaps bad judgment doomed his adventure. The Diary states that Ben-Zion departed for places unknown after Lena moved south to San Francisco, but thanks to the wonders of Ancestry.com and the 1900 and 1910 United States Census, we believe we found his destination: he lived in Berkeley, California in 1900 and Benicia (a small town about an hour inland) in 1910, before returning to Minnesota a few years later. Technology only available in this decade has enabled us to answer a question that David could not figure out nearly one hundred years ago!
A mysterious disease that was known as influenza swept across the Atlantic from Western Europe in 1891 and 1892. It took effect first in the East and thence spread westward until it swept over the entire Northwest. It was dreadful. People became sick and died quickly. It baffled medical science. Doctors applied many preventive principles, such as quarantine and isolation of the patients, but in spite of this people died by the hundreds. It seemed that the disease affected more strongly the stouter and more portly people. Many who were afflicted by the disease, even though they recovered, were left affected in some part of their constitution.
David came home one day from his shop, complaining of a tremulous beating throughout his brain. He said it was as if a small engine were at work in his head and that the piston and boiler were banging, fizzing and vibrating amid his fevered senses. His senses seemed drugged and his mind dimmed. A doctor was called and he ordered David to bed. The patient was in a state of coma for five weeks, hovering between life and death. A trained nurse was engaged to watch over him.
During these critical weeks Lena gave birth to a girl. It lived only two weeks and was carried out of the house to its final resting place before David was able to see the child. This tragedy left its indelible mark on the young mother, and weakened by physical and mental suffering, she too became very ill.
Only after a confinement of ten weeks was David able to go out. Those weeks with doctors, nurses, medicines and other expenses had taken all the ready savings of the family. The business, in the meantime, had run to ruin and the shop had been pilfered by the dishonest employees who had been left in charge.
Chicago at this time was experiencing a boom and vast preparations were being made for the World’s Fair, which opened in 1893. Thousands of adventurous people had been drawn to the city from all parts of the world.
Should we be keeping track of how badly Leah is suffering over the years? Let’s also count how many pregnancies she has over how many years. How old is she now? [Sean: She’s nearing 50 here.] David is the oldest born in 1863, now 20-something. (The next historic date which is mentioned next is 1893, in which case he would be 30!) Demographic historians are perplexed by the astonishing reproductive rate of Jews in this era from this place, and perhaps Leah is an example of this. She has a completed family size of (6?). In spite of their poverty and peripatetic wandering, the kids seem pretty healthy.
The move to Chicago in 1893 fascinates me in so many ways. First, it explains one of the mysteries that haunted me ever since I saw a Census report on my grandfather stating that his birthplace was Chicago. Why had they moved to Chicago, I wondered, and now, thanks to the Diary, we have the answer. David had faced economic ruin once again, and like his father before him he turned to relocation to find financial salvation. Even though he had no capital he opened up a little shop (we aren’t told what kind of shop, unfortunately). But once again, his prospects dimmed, the local economy tanked after the World’s Fair closed, and David closed up shop in Chicago. He had to sell his furniture to raise funds to travel back to Minnesota, where (after a few more short-term relocations) he lived out the rest of his life. Now, when I’m asked how my family ended up in Minnesota, I can report that it was a fateful combination of bad financial conditions and a deep-seated belief that relocation would bring success.
David determined to go to Chicago and moved his family, Lena and their little daughter Belle, then about five years old, and opened a little shop. He did fairly well for a man without capital. In November of 1893, Lena gave birth to a boy whom they named Albert. He was a rather sickly child and added much pain to Lena’s life.
It was while these plans were shaping up that David paid a visit to the World’s Fair. He was leisurely walking in an industrial building when he was attracted by a crowd surging about the Oriental rug section. David joined the crowd and edged his way toward the man standing on the elevated platform. The man was fully six feet tall and he had a large stomach. His brown beard was trimmed round. He was dressed in a green and gold embroidered jacket of a fantastic Oriental design, loose baggy pantaloons, tucked up at the knees, and his lower legs were covered by a gay pair of stockings. His feet were encased in a pair of sharp-pointed green sandals and on his head he wore a red fez. He was holding a beautiful Namazlik Persian prayer rug in his hands and in a strong baritone voice was extolling the fine qualities of his silk and wool rugs. The finest were made in Bukhoro [Uzbekistan], he said, where the Muslims are allowed four wives by law, but can have as many concubines and slaves as their purses permit.
These women were largely kept busy in the harems making rugs and carpets. They took great pride in their work of spinning and dying with the finest vegetable dyes and they wove fine silk and prayer rugs. Among the best was the Rose of Persia floral prayer rug design with native lilies, tulips, birds and animals wrought into the design in excellent color combinations. Inscriptions in Arabic of passages from the Koran were worked into the borders.
Albert is David’s third child. Note that nothing is said positive or negative about Belle (yet), but that comments about Al (from the perspective of 1920-something when David writes this text) are universally negative.
Is David criticizing Islamic marriage practices? Or is he merely quoting Berl?
David’s piercing eyes took in the man on the platform, as he stood like one paralyzed trying to think of where he had seen this man before. As he stood immersed in thought, he felt a hand grip on his shoulder and heard a voice say, “How are you, old pal? My wish has come true. I hoped one day to meet you in this great world. Can’t you remember me, Berl the Zameter?”
David looked at him, dumbfounded. What a change 15 years had made in the man. When they had parted in 1880 Berl was a slim, beardless youth. Now he was a large heavy man with a beard like a Turk.
David recovered from his astonishment and invited his new-found friend to dinner. While in the Russian restaurant seated before a hearty, fragrant dinner, and later over a cup of steaming Russian tea, which gave off a delightful aroma, they recalled old times and anecdotes. Berl told David of his arrival in Salonica and the hardships he was forced to endure. He told how he had entered the carpet trade and that he had taken a liking to it and learned the business thoroughly.
“It happened that I made the acquaintance of a Mullah, a Moslem clergyman, who gave me lessons in Arabic,” Berl said.
“I made good progress and became proficient in reading and writing the language. I committed to memory many passages from the Koran, also some verses from the Bible that helped me immensely in dealing with fanatical Turkish and Persian rug manufacturers and dealers. I have searched the ancient books of Arabic and Persian writers for philosophical epigrams to insert in the borders of the prayer rugs and this brought me large orders. Gradually I rose from position to position to that of factory superintendent. My firm is one of the largest exporters and importers of antique rugs in Turkey. I made a study also of rug designing, especially for the Indian trade, and finally it took me away from home on camel caravans. I became quite a linguist and am familiar with Russian, Armenian, Georgian, Turkish and Tartar dialects, speaking all fluently.
It is my duty to search for rare rugs and carpets in the old Persian bazaars, among the Khorosan and Irakajeme, Bokham and many of the Balkan provinces, where there are many factories. Each one specializes in a certain style. I travel as far as India to deliver and take orders among the rich potentates. My firm chose me to represent them in America with this costly exhibit and here I am fortunate enough to meet my boyhood friend, the last thing I ever expected to do. How small this world is after all.”
I love this story of David’s reunion with Berl the Zameter. It’s interesting to see which passages in his diary are the most lively, colorful, and actually joyful. I’ve noticed that most of them have to do with some sort of travel adventure or fresh landscape. David’s story of the world-traveling rug trader seems too fantastic to be fiction. Clearly, he stood in admiration of Berl’s business acumen and chutzpah. It’s also clear that he respected the man’s intellect.
Another case of a scarcely believable coincidence. No wonder David was inspired to write about his life!
I think this is the second time that we meet a person from the past. The first time was when David had $15 and he was found by a wanderer whom his parents had helped. One of his important themes: good deeds will be rewarded in the future in ways you cannot imagine.
This is great. The point: Jews from the Pale of Settlement are enterprising. They travel to far-off places, they learn languages, they inhabit and master the exotic. You see a lot of this pro-Arab culture stance in the Zionist pioneers before the First World War. It is naïve and sincere at the same time.
At their parting, the two men shook hands and Berl said, “Let’s next meet in Palestina.”
David’s “Palestine” is the correct historical designation. How Zionist David was at different points is an interesting question to discuss. Another possible term is the Hebrew: Eretz Yisrael.
Already David is reminding us that violating one of the most important commandments of Judaism was crucial to his search for success in business — he had to be willing to work on Saturday. One of the most memorable features of my Jewish childhood was the manner in which each of my relatives would declare that they had found the perfect balance with respect to observance, and how everyone else was either too religious or not sufficiently observant. I now see that this way of thinking has a long history in our family!