MALBISH

MALBISH

            His name at birth remains unknown.  He lived in Leeds, England, where he worked as a tailor.  In the 1880s he published correspondence pieces about the lives of immigrant laborers for Morris Winchevsky’s weekly newspaper Der poylisher idl (The little Polish Jew) in London, in which he also published poetry.  In the poem “Gelebt in der velt” (Lived in the world), dated September 1884, he criticized the aloofness of Jewish works in tailor shops in Leeds, who:

All week long they work terribly hard,

Cutting, rapping, and spinning,

They spin the machine and rap with shears,

Busy, working, stitching,

Running around, troubled, off guard,

From Sunday until Friday night,

Then comes the day of rest,

They’re free of labor today,

And they can devote a little time to life,

The day departs, in any event,

And they’ve got some money in their pockets,

So goes their lives in this world.

Sources: Kalmen Marmor, “Arbeter-dikhter af a veyle” (The worker-poet oftentimes), Morgn-frayhayt (New York) (October 23, 1938); Marmor, in Almanakh, 10 yoriker yubiley fun internatsyonaln arbeter ordn (Tenth anniversary of the International Workers Order) (New York, 1940), p. 354; Shmuel Niger, “Emigrantn-literatur” (Immigrant literature), Di tsukunft (New York) (June 1940).

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