A Household of Eight

Born in Koidanov (now in Belarus), Avrom Reyzen (Reisen) was a celebrated Yiddish writer, poet, editor, and literary activist. Admired by early Yiddish writers such as Y. L. Peretz and Sholem Aleichem, Reyzen frequently published poems and short stories in Yiddish periodicals and journals in Eastern Europe and the United States. After briefly serving in the tsarist army, he settled in Warsaw, where he founded the Tsentral publishing house and edited special collections and journals of Yiddish literature. Reyzen moved to New York in 1911 and immediately became part of the Yiddish literary, cultural, and political scene there, publishing in the major socialist and progressive Yiddish periodicals and issuing his collected works in some dozen volumes. A lifelong supporter of socialism and workers’ politics, Reyzen is remembered for his mastery of the realistic short story and for depicting all strata of Jewish life. His emphasis fell on everyday working people, immigrants, families, and women. His poetry was noted for its mix of simplicity and sharp irony reminiscent of the work of Heinrich Heine, and many of his poems were set to music. Both of these dimensions are evident in “A Household of Eight,” a savagely ironic lyric, sometimes (mis)interpreted musically as sentimental.