To the Worker Women

Born in Kaluga (today in Russia) to a family of a retired Jewish soldier, Dovid Edelstadt (Eydelshtat) was raised in Russian but gained fame as a Yiddish poet. Following the wave of pogroms in 1881, Edelstadt emigrated to the United States as a member of the Am Oylom agricultural movement. Settling in Cincinnati, he worked in the garment industry, became active in the anarchist movement, and wrote poetry in Russian. He moved to New York City in 1888 and, in response to the Haymarket Affair, cofounded Di Pionern der Frayhayt, the city’s first Jewish anarchist organization; he also turned to writing protest poetry in Yiddish, which was popularized by the short-lived anarchist Yiddish weekly Varhayt (Truth). In 1890 he began writing for a new Yiddish weekly, the Fraye arbeter shtime, and he briefly served as its editor in chief before moving to Denver in 1891 to be treated for tuberculosis. Edelstadt’s poems, known for their simple and rousing refrains, served as a cri de coeur for Jewish workers to fight for their dignity against unfair working conditions; his “Vakht oyf!” (Wake up!), “Arbeter froyen” (Worker Women), and “In kamf” (In Struggle) continued to be popular anthems in Jewish labor and activist movements into the interwar period, and his works have recently enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in contemporary klezmer and Yiddish music.