5/15 | Birthday of Bessie Abramowitz Hillman
Today in Yiddishkayt… May 15 Birthday of Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, Labor Leader Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, a leading labor organizer in Chicago, was born on May 15, 1887. Abramowitz immigrated to the United States in 1905 and found work in the garment industry in Chicago as a button sewer. She quickly became a leader in her workplace, organizing fellow workers to protest cuts in their wages and unsafe working conditions. In 1910 she helped to lead what became a citywide strike of the garment industry. Basheva Abramowitz was born in a village called Linowo, Grodno Province (today...
Read More5/12 | Yortsayt of Szmul Zygielbojm
Today in Yiddishkayt… May 12 Yortsayt of Szmul Zygielbojm I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people in Poland whose representative I am are being exterminated. On May 12, 1943, the Bundist leader Szmul Zygielbojm — in utter despair upon receiving the news of the complete destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, in protest at the passivity with which the world was reacting in the face of the ongoing genocide, and in an act of unimaginable solidarity — killed himself by gas in his London...
Read More5/11 | Birthday of Irving Berlin
Today in Yiddishkayt… May 11 Birthday of Irving Berlin, Lyricist and Composer Irving Berlin was born Yisroel (Isidore) Baline on May 11, 1888 in a shtetl near Mogilev (today Магілёў, Belarus). He was the youngest of eight children born to Moyshe (a cantor) and Lena Baline. The family settled in New York in 1893 and three years later Moyshe (now Moses) died leaving the family poverty-stricken. In 1902, Israel Baline left home and worked at various singing jobs in the city. In 1906, he wrote his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy” and changed his name to...
Read More5/10 | Dedication of the Peretz Shrine
Today in Yiddishkayt… May 10 Dedication of the Peretz Shrine, 1925 On May 10, 1925, in commemoration of the 10th yortsayt of the great master of Yiddish letters, Y.L. Peretz, an ornate shrine was unveiled in the Warsaw’s Jewish Cemetery on Okopowa Street. The Oyhel Perets (known in Polish as Mauzoleum Trzech Pisarzy, the mausoleum of the three writers: Peretz, An-sky, and Dinezon) was designed by the great sculptor Avrom Ostrzego and is a majestic monument to Peretz and stunning achievements of Yiddish culture in the Warsaw metropolis. Ostrzego's Original...
Read More5/10 | Birthday of Léon Bakst
Today in Yiddishkayt… May 10 Birthday of Léon Bakst, Painter & Theater Designer Léon Bakst was born Lev (or Leyb) Rosenberg on May 10, 1866 to a middle class Jewish family in Grodno (today: Гродно, Belarus). He studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts as a noncredit student and worked as a book illustrator. He was expelled from the Academy after depicting figures in the Pietà as impoverished Jews. At the time of his first exhibition in 1889 he took the surname “Bakst” apparently based on his mother’s maiden name, although its origin is unclear. At the...
Read More5/9 | Birthday of Dovid Edelstadt
Today in Yiddishkayt… May 9 Birthday of Dovid Edelstadt, Anarchist & Poet Dovid Edelstadt was born on May 9, 1866 in Kaluga (today: Калуга, Russia). He was educated in Russian language and literature and he published his first poem in Russian at the age of 12. After the Kiev pogrom of 1881 he emigrated to the United States as part of an agrarian settlement program. Rather than moving to the countryside, however, he settled in Cincinnati to work in the garment industry. In 1888 he moved to New York City, where he continued working in sweatshops and became involved in the...
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