YITSKHOK ZEYLIN

YITSKHOK ZEYLIN (March 13, 1873-January 1941)

            He hailed from Latvia and was raised and educated in Riga.  In 1886 he graduated from a Russian district school named for Catherine the Great, and afterward he studied at the Riga Polytechnic, where he joined the revolutionary movement, was arrested, and thrown in prison and there acquired a lung ailment.  In 1891 he departed for the United States.  He worked at first in factories and stores, was a literary agent in New York, and then (1895) he moved to Buffalo to study.  He completed university in 1899 and began to practice medicine, proved to be quite successful, and became well-to-do.  In 1900 he moved to Los Angeles.  For a time he was head surgeon at the Santa Fe Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  In his last years he lived in El Monte in the San Gabriel Valley, California, where he established his own small hospital.  There he died.  He wrote poetry in Russian while he was still living in Riga.  In New York he began to compose poems in Yiddish, and he published them in anarchist periodicals.  His poem, “Tsum poet” (To the poet), “dedicated to Dovid Edelshtadt,” was published in Fraye arbeter-shtime (Free voice of labor) in New York (January 15, 1892).  His second poem, “Di frayhayt un di velt” (Freedom and the world), “to the memory of D. Edelshtadt,” appeared in Arbayter-frand (Workers’ friend) in London (December 2, 1892).  His subsequent poems—including: “Der sheys” (The perspiration), “Der arbayter-poet” (The worker-poet), “Mayn harts” (My heart), “In kamf” (In battle), “Der shterbender shklaf” (The dying slave), “Bay nakht” (At night), “Vornung” (Warning), and “A shtikl vide” (A little bit of a confession)—he published in the two labor newspapers over the years 1892-1899.

Sources: Kalmen Marmor, Dovid edelshtadt (Dovid Edelshadt) (New York, 1950), see index; B. Y. Byalostotski, ed., Edelshadt-gedenk-bukh (Memory volume for [Dovid] Edelshtadt) (New York-Los Angeles, 1952), see index; N. B. Minkov, in Gerekhtikeyt (New York) 10 (October 1945); Minkov, in Kultur un dertsiung (New York) (May 1956); Minkov, Pyonern fun yidisher poezye in amerike (Pioneers of Yiddish poetry in America) (New York, 1956), pp. 185-207.