author
Morris Rosenfeld
1862–1923
A leading Yiddish poet of immigrant New York, he gave unforgettable voice to workers in the garment trade and the emotional strain of tenement life. His poems helped turn the hardship of the sweatshop into literature that readers could immediately recognize as real.
1 Audiobook
Songs of Labor, and Other Poems
by Morris Rosenfeld
About the author
Born in Russian Poland in 1862, Morris Rosenfeld trained as a tailor before emigrating after earlier stays in Europe and settling in New York in 1886. He wrote in Yiddish and became closely identified with the lives of Jewish immigrant workers, especially those laboring in the city’s clothing shops.
Rosenfeld was often called the "poet of the sweatshop" because his best-known verses captured exhaustion, family separation, poverty, and the fragile hopes of working people. His writing reached a wide audience through newspapers and poetry collections, and it helped make Yiddish literature central to the cultural life of immigrant Jews in America.
Alongside poetry, he also worked as a journalist and prose writer. More than a century later, he is still remembered for turning everyday struggle into songs and poems with deep feeling and clarity.