SHMUEL (“MULYE”) EDELMAN

SHMUEL (“MULYE”) EDELMAN (1876-December 7, 1954)

            He was born in Visoko-Litovsk (Visokaye), Grodno district, Russian Poland.  His father was a religious Jew and a Talmud scholar, but also a Ḥovev-tsiyon (Lover of Zion).  Shmuel received a traditional Jewish education and studied secular subject matter on his own.  He was cofounder of the association of Labor Zionists in Poland (1905).  He was later vice-chairman of the central committee of the Labor Zionist party in Poland, of the Lodz party committee and of the Borokhov school’s board of advisors, a member of the senior executive committee of the Central Jewish School Organization (Tsisho) in Poland, a member of the presidium of the cultural office of the united trade union movement in Lodz, chairman of the Lodz union of business employees, and chair of the council for cooperatives.  Together with Y. Tabenkin and Ben-Tsvi, he spent time in jail in Tsarist Russia.  In 1935 he made aliya to the land of Israel.  He spent a short time in Europe in 1947.  In his last years he turned his attention to setting up a Borokhov-syle kibbutz, “Mishmar Hanegev” (Guardian of the Negev), and there he died.  Using the pen names Pinkhes or P, Edelman wrote for a number of periodicals, including: Poyle-tsien almanakh (Labor Zionist almanac), Arbeter-tsaytung (Workers’ newspaper), Arbayter-vort (Workers’ word), and Lodzher arbeter (Lodz worker).

Sources: Tog (New York) (December 18, 1954); Mulye (shemuel edelman), zamlung tsu zayn ondenk (Mulye [Shmuel Edelman], a collection in his memory) (Tel Aviv: Ringelblum Institute, 1955), 200 pp.—contributions by Y. Zerubavl, Y. Tabenkin, N. Nir, M. Erem, Daniel Leybl, and Y. Stolarski, among others; “Naye bikher” (New books), Di tsukunft (New York) (March 1956); Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 253.

Yankev Birnboym.