Today in Yiddishkayt… December 4

Birthday of Jacob Milch, Writer & Political Activist

Jacob Milch was born Yankev Zoyermilkh in Warsaw on December 4, 1866. He was an exceptional student, but at 12, after his father’s death, left school to became an apprentice to a wood carver. Three years later, he joined a group of young progressive thinkers. After his Russian army service, he came to the U.S., where he became a labor movement activist and leader in the Socialist Labor Party. Milch was a very popular writer, appearing in the major Socialist dailies and literary magazines. He died in New York on August 18, 1945.

• Jacob Milch • יעקב מילך

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  Born Yankev Zoyermilkh in Warsaw on the second night of Hanukkah—December 4, 1866. He came to America in 1891 after 5 years of Russian military service. At the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th, he became the well-known essayist and journalist Jacob Milch, whose popular writing explaining political theory and analyzing literature appeared in the journals of the labor movement and Socialist party.

  

•  Dos Abend-Blatt • דאָס אַבענד-בלאַטט

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  Milch first wrote for "Dos Abend Blatt (Evening Paper)," the late edition daily that grew out of the popular weekly "Arbeter Tsaytung (Workers' News)," the organ of the Socialist Labor Party of America. Launched in 1894 by the United Hebrew Trades, it was the first socialist Yiddish daily in New York and its popularity soon rivaled the main Yiddish daily, the Anarchist "Freie Arbeiter Shtimme." Along with the Party, the paper split into two factions in 1897 and the minority group created the "Forverts—The Jewish Daily Forward," affiliated with the Socialist Party of America.

  

• Di Tsukunft • די צוקונפֿט

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  Another Socialist journal to which Milch contributed was "Di Tsukunft (The Future)," created in 1892, the year after his arrival in the U.S. Under the editorship of Avrom Walt Liessin, it became the premier Yiddish literary magazine in America.

  

• Biro-Bidzhan: A New Epoch

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  In addition to his essays and writing in the daily press, Milch published a number of books. In the 1930s, Milch became a staff writer for the "Morgn-Frayhayt (Morning-Freedom)," which reflected his growing closer to the American Communist movement. This volume, "Biro-bidzhan: a naye epokhe in der idisher geshikhte (Birobidzhan: a New Epoch in Jewish History)," was published in New York in 1936 by the American branch of IKOR, the Jewish Colonization Organization, which helped raise funds for Jewish settlement in the Jewish Autonomous Republic.