Saturday Dec 27

Attended the 10th Anniversary
Party of the former David
Wolfsohn Club.

Recalled former days by
meeting old timers from the
club. Men and women.

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Matt's Notes

It looks like the "10th Anniversary Party of the former David Wolfsohn Club" commemorated the 1914 death of David Wolfsohn, a major early Zionist leader who helped found the Jewish Colonial Trust and later succeeded his close companion Theodor Herzl as president of the World Zionist Organization.

Papa had been in America for just a year in 1914, so the "old timers" he hung out with on this night knew him when he was young, just learning English, and sharing a bed with four other people in his cousin's living room. The David Wolfsohn Club may even have been the first Zionist organization Papa joined in New York. Still, he doesn't wax sentimental about this party in the same way he did when he attended the Sniatyner ball (an annual reunion of people from his town in the old country) back in February. Perhaps, with the new year and its inevitable complement of extra self-assessment at hand, a reminder of his younger days made him reflect more than usual on his dissatisfaction with his life's progress. (Then again, maybe he had a great time and was too just too tired to describe the party in more detail.)

I'm also curious as to why the phrase "Men and women" appears, almost as an afterthought, at the end of this entry. It's not Papa's style to write this way. I get the feeling he added it not to point out that men were in attendance, but to remind himself of the women he encountered, perhaps an old girlfriend or two who had roles in the intense, heady drama of his early days in this country.