Pincus Goodman (
Yiddish: פינחס גודמאן, 1881–1947), who published as P. Goodman (פּ. גודמאַן), was an American
Yiddish-language poet active from the 1920s to the 1940s.[1] Because he worked as a
silk weaver his whole life, he was known as the "weaver poet."[2][3][4]
Biography
Goodman was born in April 1881 in
Łowicz,
Poland.[5][1][6][7] He had a traditional Jewish education and even considered studying to become a
Rabbi before turning from religion to secular politics and becoming a
freethinker.[8][3] His parents both died in the
1881–1896 cholera pandemic when he was eight years old, leaving him an orphan.[3][1][8] He became a weaver in
Łódź, an important industrial centre in Poland which had a large Jewish silk-weaving industry.[1][9]
He emigrated to the United States in 1902 or possibly 1904, settling in
Paterson, New Jersey and continuing to work as a
silk weaver for the rest of his life.[10][7][11][12] Paterson was an important centre of Jewish weavers from Lodz and Bialystok who were known for their left-wing politics.[13] He and his family lived in extreme poverty and he never became rich from his silk weaving or his writing.[3] He soon became a member of the
Arbeter Ring (worker's circle).[2]
While continuing to work as a weaver, Goodman wrote poetry prolifically, printing pieces in The Jewish Daily Forward, Der Tog, Arbeter, and Fraye arbeter shtime.[3][1] His works described themes of poverty, family, and work.[3] Some of his poems were set to music and became popular in worker's choirs, such as the Kultur-khor directed by Vladimir Heifetz.[3][14] It was only in 1922 that he managed to print his first book of poetry, Veber-lider (weaver songs). In it he made use of the rich Yiddish-language vocabulary of weaving and described the hard life of workers in the industry, two things which rarely appeared in literary works at the time.[15][16] The following year, he published In geshpan: lider un gedikhten ("In Harness: Songs and poems"), which he ended up expanding into a larger volume in a second printing and which grew to five volumes over the next two decades.[1][17] Although they were well regarded, he apparently published them at his own expense.[18][8]
He married his first wife Rebecca Pedlock in Łódź in 1902.[8][3][19] They had a number of children: Annie (born 1903), Louis (born 1904), Rose (born 1906), David (born 1910). His first wife died in around 1914 of
Bright's disease.[3] He remarried in December 1919 to Rebecca (Becky) Diamond and they had a son Max (born 1921).[20][12][19] Goodman is also the great-grandfather of novelist
Tama Janowitz.[8]
Publications
Veber-lider, also known as Der Ṿeber: balade ("The Weaver, Poems", 1922)[21][1]
In geshpan: lider un gedikhten volume 1 ("In Harness: Songs and poems" 1926)[1][22][23]
In geshpan: lider un gedikhten volume 2 (1932)[24][25]
In geshpan: lider un gedikhten volume 3 (1940)[26]
^Goldberg, Halina (2016). "Family Picture at an Exhibition". In Veidlinger, Jeffrey (ed.). Going to the people : Jews and the ethnographic impulse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 256–81.
ISBN9780253019165.