Oscar Wilde said, "I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read."

Keeping a diary or a "zhurnal" has long been a Jewish activity, particularly at certain times of the year (such as around the High Holidays).

And in the 6/20/08 "Heart of the City" cartoon, we read:  Dear Diary,
Tonight is a special night because I am writing in you with a NEW pen.  It's a really cool pink pen with muti-color ink and has a funny and cute fuzzy head with googly eyes. You know your life is a total bore when you start writing about what you're writing with..."

The late Wendy Wasserstein kept a diary.
Thursday, Oct. 3, 1996, she wrote:
"Canceled breakfast with my mother. Promised I would see her tomorrow.  We have a habit of having breakfasts together so I can leave for a meeting before the questions become too personal.  Odd keeping a diary.  It's like knowing exactly how time is managed.  I am simultaneously keeping a food diary in my 500th attempt to manage weight.  It seems to me I now have two documents to prove that others are far more disciplined and innately good. I am debating whether to list the french fries on the food-management document or the time I spent on a sofa with my cat thinking about absolutely nothing here.

Anyway, in an attempt to know where the time goes, here's an exact schedule of yesterday's events:

........
12:00-2:00--First meeting as chair of Program Committee at WNET--our public television station.  Sat next to Walter Cronkite.  Don't quite understand how I became the chairperson since I still feel that in any meeting I should be passing notes to my friends about the teacher's hair.  But I genuinely care about public television. Of course, it amazes me that anyone could say they genuinely don't care."

I recently had the pleasure of reading a 1983 "bukh" titled, "From A Ruined Garden - The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry," Edited and Translated by Jack Kugelmass & Jonathan Boyarin.

For the first time I learned the meaning of the word "pinkes."

In the chapter titled, "What Is a Pinkes?"
(told by Leybl, Shiter and Recorded by B. Baler, Pinkas Kovel (Kowel), we read:

"I remember hearing the word pinkes several times when I was a small child.

For instance, when an unusual event took place in town, the adults, while commenting among themselves on the events, used to say:  'Such a terrible story should be recorded in the pinkes!'  On other occasions when things happened that weren't quite as unheard of, but were nonetheless curious, even the women used to finish their accounts with:  'It was something to write down in the pinkes!'

But what this thing called a pinkes was, what it looked like, and where it was to be found, this pinkes which was mentioned in tones of such respect, as though it were something holy--I had no idea, and even in my imagination I couldn't picture it....

The pinkes in our town, and probably in other towns as well, was kept by the burial society (which was called "the Society of the Concerned" in Kovel).  When a new trustee was chosen for the society--on Simkhes Toyre, as was done in other small towns--the pinkes was given to him to hold.

(Note:  Any Jew whose name began with an M was forbidden to occupy the trusteeship, because the word for 'corpse," mes, begins with an m.)

The author continues, "My father put the pinkes in a safe place in our store.  One day, when no one was around, I approached the closet where it lay, my steps slow and my heart pounding, opened the doors and looked at it.  I saw a large, old book, the size of a volume of the Talmud, with ribbed, leather covers torn in the corners.  Out of them peeked the tops of yellowed, inscribed pieces of paper.

I grew terrified just looking at it.  I myself don't know why I was so afraid, but at that moment images flew into my mind of awesome, horrifying events that had taken place in our town, events I had been told about and which were certainly recorded in the pinkes.  The book seemed especially holy to me, and I was afraid even to touch it...."

Leybele asks his Rebe,  What is a pinkes? What's written in it?  He replies:

"A pinkes, Leybele, is a book in which all of the unusual events and occurrences that take place in a town are recorded, both good things and, God forbid, not such good things...The good things are recorded, so that the generations that follow us will learn to behave well and will also perform good deeds.  The bad things that happen, may we be spared, are recorded so that people may know not to do them, and also so that the One Above will pity us and see that no evil harms us in the future.  Amen."

Rabbi Reuven Lauffer (asktherabbi.org), in an e-mail, wrote, "Yes, the Pinkas was a sort of community diary where all the happenings in the community would be recorded.  Before the Second World War such things were found throughout Eastern Europe and also in some communities in Germany as well.  They are fascinating glimpses into the world that the communities lived in."

Janet Ruth Falon ("The Jewish Journaling Book") reminds us that we are the people of the book and that we should keep a Life-Cycle Journal.  She suggests:  "Record all the important life-cycle events--your wedding, your son's bris, a bar or bat mitzvah--in one dedicated journal.  Writing down your experinces and rereading them later will help you remember major milestones and the ways that Judaism adds depth to them."

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___________________________________________
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe is the author of
two books:

"Yiddish for Dog & Cat Lovers" and
"Are Yentas, Kibitzers, & Tummlers Weapons of Mass Instruction?  Yiddish
Trivia."  To order a copy, go to her
website: MarjorieGottliebWolfe.com

NU, what are you waiting for?  Order the book!