About Art

Born in Pinsk (today in Belarus), Shaul Yanovsky had a religious upbringing and later attended a modernized yeshiva that included the Russian language and some secular subjects in its curriculum. Yanovsky ended his formal studies at a young age and moved to Białystok, where he published his first works of journalism, in Russian. In 1885, Yanovsky moved to the United States, settling in New York City, where he became involved in labor organizing. The following year, the Haymarket Affair in Chicago prompted his embrace of anarchism, and in 1890 he left New York for London to become the editor of Arbayter fraynd, which adopted a firmly anarchist line under his leadership. Eventually pushed out of his editorial role in London, he returned to New York City in 1895 and helped to propel the development of Yiddish anarchism there, especially in the city’s Lower East Side. Reviving the defunct journal Di fraye arbeter shtime in 1899, Yanovsky grew its readership substantially over the following decade and a half; he left the newspaper in 1919 following disputes with the pro-Bolshevik editorial staff. During the 1920s, he worked for the Forverts and contributed to the literary journal Tsukunft. Yanovsky resumed his editorship of Di fraye arbeter shtime in 1929, publishing theater criticism alongside his editorials on anarchism. He died in New York.