Prayer and Hierarchy.
MAX: Max, interviewed by Lisa or talking with other family members And Saturday morning when we go to pray, there are some pieces that we sing aloud, Yiddishe. And some people know some things, and you pray it for yourself. So when I, when I feel like it, and I do feel like it! I like the Jewish prayers! There's a lot of music involved in this. So I let myself go, you know. But you know I can't see well, so I sit near that fellow with the black uniform. He always wears the same suit, black suit, and needs some sort of an interpreter. For people that don't know to speak English. So he comes in and interprets as a sort of intermediate between the management and customers. I don't know what he gets for it. He talks a good Polish. He deals a lot with Polish people, who work in the launderers and the kitchen, and you gotta know [how] to speak Polish. So he's what you call one of the five, six helpers, that help him out in the government. So when we go Saturday morning, to prayers, that there is a few chosen ones, that know how to conduct, like that big fellow, what's his name? Willie! He's a good performer. When he davens – shachris and mousaf – he's a real (nusach) what you call... 'cause I know about it, 'cause (when) I was in Florida I used to go watch the good Chazzanim with the good musicians. So this here new fellow discovered me. And he's already planning for me a place in his government.
LISA: Lisa, interviewing her grandfather, Max What does he want you to do?
MAX: He'll give me a job! 10,000 a year.
NARRATOR: Lisa, backgrounding/commenting. In any small tight-knit community where people have much in common there is bound to be a hierarchy of authority. It was another way of feeling important, of distinguishing oneself from the others. An astute observer of the shenanigans of the Jackson's residents, Max objectified the stratification of his peers, in treating it as if it were a corporation. But this was all for the purpose of making fun of it – he recognized the ludicrousness of the existence of such a "government," laughing at himself throughout nevertheless.
GEORGE: What time did he finish?
MAX: I don't know! I went to sleep! I was using a strategy to pull him, and I pulled him! And I went to sleep!
FRAN: Yeah, like someone used to put eyes on their head, and sleep!
MAX: Yeah. He was watching like a hawk. He doesn't wanna go to sleep, and he's watching the other ones. They shouldn't go.
NARRATOR: It is highly commendable that the residents of the Jackson Hotel conduct their own holiday services. The small room in which they play cards doubles as a synagogue where the octogenarian congregants gather to be led by a Rabbi at least as old. It is a laudable situation to us, but the participants of the services take it quite seriously. What desires these people have left in their bodies are easily tempered by the wishes of the greater whole. After all, why should they fight with one another? Perhaps in the interest of maintaining some of their individuality they would indulge in trivial squabbles, but their great need of one another overshadowed whims that might isolate themselves from the others.
IMAGE: untitled, (Max wearing zipper sweater over striped jacket)
IMAGE: untitled (Max wearing zipper sweater over striped jacket, closeup)