Yes, it should be “Mayday, Mayday,” if we’re talking about the distress signal, but I’m referring to the date of May 1st. Known as the worker’s holiday, a very big deal in the former Soviet Union and Russia, and other socialist and communist countries and movements, it highlights the efforts of laborers. It’s not a Jewish holiday, but in terms of its history it certainly could be. It is the international equivalent of our Labor Day. Its origins are tragic, rooted in conflict and the resulting deaths and injuries.
As most of us know, at the turn of the last century the plight of workers was perilous. Among other demands, on top of the list was an eight-hour workday. The number of hours employers required of their employees was absurd, especially for children. On May 1, 1886 about 300,000 people gathered across the country to protest conditions, and among them were many Jewish immigrants who, along with other immigrant groups, knew only sweatshop conditions. The largest protest was held in Chicago with over 40,000 strikers. Chicago police opened fire on them. Another event was held in Haymarket Square to protest this violence. In the Square someone threw a bomb killing a police officer. Eight innocent strikers were arrested and charged with murder. Four were hanged by the state of Illinois.
Emma Goldman was a Rochester, NY teenager who heard about this incident and its consequences. She became politicized, a revolutionary who strongly identified as a cultural Jew. From then on in her role as social worker and activist she was an integral part of the labor movement. At a May Day rally in 1939 she “decried those who thought that politics only happened at the polls.” She called workers to rely on “direct action, your collective strength, and strike for higher wages,” and said, “let us mark this first day of May by the realization that organization in the economic field is our only effective weapon against war and its creator, the state, against Capitalism and its offspring Fascism.’”
But it wasn’t Emma Goldman alone. Jews have always been involved in labor issues. A chief organizer of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was Samuel Gompers. While the movement turned in the direction of the more recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, it began with those who came to the United States decades earlier as did Gompers. The labor movement intensified and there were spokespeople whose Yiddish was used to rally workers, to inform them (the Forverts, Yiddish newspaper, now the Forward), to give them the news of the day. But there were also those who wrote poetry, among them Morris Winchevsky and Morris Rosenfeld who was known as the “Sweatshop Poet.” Some of their poems were put to music and their lyrics sung by the workers.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 that killed 146 mostly Jewish and Italian young women once again brought to the fore the conditions of workers. It renewed the labor movement to the point where legislation was introduced to prevent such tragedies in the future.
There is far more to learn about with respect to Jews and Labor. Our connection is directly tied to our value of social justice that began with the Torah and the prophets and, thankfully, continues to this day.
(Speaking of the wages of laborers, the rabbi was distressed at the lack of generosity among his Congregants. He prayed that the rich should give more tzedakah to the poor. “And has your prayer been answered?” asked his wife. ‘Half of it was,” replied the rabbi. “the poor are willing to accept”)