Apr 13, 2023 - Sale 2633

Sale 2633 - Lot 106

Price Realized: $ 406
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(JUDAICA.) Israel S. Ostrow. Diary and memoir recounting his childhood in 1920s Cleveland. [22], 47-181 manuscript pages plus many blank leaves (at least one blank torn out). Folio, 11 3/4 x 7 1/4 inches, original buckram; front hinge split, minor dampstaining. Cleveland, OH, 1958-1961
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An unusual diary and memoir by Israel Simon Ostrow (1922-2011). It includes passages about the Mount Pleasant neighborhood in Cleveland where he spent his early childhood in the 1920s; he lived on East 117th Street between Kinsman and Union. "Most of the people in this neighborhood were first and 2nd generation Jews from Eastern Europe. . . . The butcher shops bore signs of Hebraic print denoting that the meat sold was kosher. Customers gossiped with eachother and with merchants in Yiddish. Some of the older men wore skull caps and beards. . . . In the street, which was our playground, we chattered in English. . . . The family went to shule to pray, to celebrate the Sabbath and other holy days, and for social get-togethers. Sometimes in the evenings old men sat and played cards there." (pages 107-108). "I don't know whether children still play nuts on Passover. During my childhood this game was one of the chief delights of that delightful holiday. It's a simple gambling game. . . . each child tosses a nut at a mark, usually a porch step or a sidewalk crack" (page 119). The history of his mother's family stretching back three generations to Hungary is recounted on pages 132-133.

Ostrow describes a frightening adventure with his stepfather at length: "One night Sam took me to his bootlegger. This was about 3 miles from where we lived, so we went by streetcar. . . . The bootlegger did business from his home. Customers sat in his living and dining rooms, and drank and chatted. . . . Sam sat and talked and drank and got drunk. After a while he became morose and irritable. When he finally decided to leave, I felt very frightened. . . . We arrived at the house of Uncle Manie. . . . Their home was in the middle of an almost completely Negro district, and the neighborhood was an out and out slum. . . . Moishe and Pearl told me of the rats that came out of their holes after one was in bed and ran up over the covers, and sometimes bit" (pages 123-124). After resuming their walk home in the dark, his stepfather passed out on a lawn, and young Israel was picked up by a policeman.