Sunday Apr 20

Both days of Pesach
with my sisters. --

Met little Sadie at Sister
Claras house and took her
home to Evas, where I sat
a little while.

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Matt's Notes

Papa had spent the previous two evening at his sisters' Pesach (Passover) seders, but I'm not sure why he starts this passage off by pointing it out again. Was this a happy recap? Was he flushed with affection because he felt fortunate to have his sisters close by? Or did he just not realize he'd written about Pesach over the last couple of days? A holiday like this with its family-oriented, sit-down dinners must have made Papa especially anxious about his ailing father back in the old country, so maybe this entry's little Passover wrap-up is an unconscious sigh of relief.

I do wonder if his family in Sniatyn ever got the 20-pound shipment of matzoh Papa sent them back on March 5th. I'm still not sure how he would have sent the matzoh (those who have memorized this site will recall my speculation about the logistics of international matzoh transport in my comments about that entry) but a friend of this site named Ari, an academic who knows about such things, told me recently that the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee had an infrastructure in place to get food over to Eastern Europe back in the 20's. Perhaps Papa read their ads in the Yiddish papers and trusted them with his precious cargo.

Alas, no one can tell me who "little Sadie" was, why Papa brought her from his sister Clara's place to Eva's, or even what it means when he says he "met" her. Did Clara and Eva collude to set Papa up with Sadie and drum up some reason for him to walk her from one place to the other? Was she a young cousin who he just hadn't seen in a while? Perhaps it was typical for Lower East Siders like Papa to mill around the neighborhood on a Sunday night, dropping in on friends and family, picking up conversations on the street, and sitting "a little while" with someone here and there. It sounds kind of relaxing.