J. A. Maryson
Born1866 (1866)
Died1941 (aged 74–75)
Other namesY. A. Merison
Occupation(s)Physician, translator
Maryson's Yiddish translation of Das Kapital

Jacob Abraham Maryson (1866–1941[1]) was a Jewish–American anarchist, doctor,[2] essayist and Yiddish translator.[3] Maryson was among the few Pioneers of Liberty who could write in English.[3] He was among the Pioneers who launched the Varhayt in 1889, the first American anarchist periodical in Yiddish.[4]

Maryson was the second editor of the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime in 1890, following Roman Lewis.[3] He briefly returned to the editorship for a few months following Saul Yanovsky three decades later, but only lasted a few months after refusing to publish a pro-Communist article.[5] Yanovsky had developed an opposition among anarchists for his disavowal of Leon Czolgosz's assassination of William McKinley, Maryson was among his detractors despite being more politically moderate than Yanovsky. In 1906, he advocated for anarchists to join in electoral politics to encourage governmental decentralization and counteract state socialism.[6] Maryson sidestepped the Jewish radical community's debate over whether to endorse an autonomous, Jewish, socialist, self-governing territory.[7]

Maryson contributed to a variety of other Yiddish publications[8][9] and became known as "the Kropotkin of the Jewish anarchist movement".[7] During Fraye Arbeter Shtime's hiatus in the late 1890s, Maryson assisted in the cultural and literary journal Di Fraye Gezelshaft.[10] Beginning in 1911, he edited the anarchist periodical Dos Fraye Vort.[11] Maryson organized the Kropotkin Literary Society to print Yiddish translations of European thinkers.[9] Maryson handled some of the group's most challenging translations,[12] including Marx's Das Kapital, Stirner's The Ego and His Own, and Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.[1] He also translated John Stuart Mill's On Liberty.[13] Maryson later wrote The Principles of Anarchism in 1935.[1]

He married the intellectual and doctor Katherina Yevzerov, who became known for her writings on "the woman question" in the Yiddish radical press[14] and on women's suffrage.[15]

Works

References

  1. ^ a b c Avrich, Paul (2005). Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America. AK Press. p. 518. ISBN 978-1-904859-27-7.
  2. ^ Falk, Candace, ed. (2003). Emma Goldman: Making speech free, 1902-1909. University of California Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-520-22569-5.
  3. ^ a b c Avrich 1988, p. 185.
  4. ^ Avrich 1988, p. 179.
  5. ^ Zimmer 2015, p. 147.
  6. ^ Zimmer 2015, pp. 34–35.
  7. ^ a b Zimmer 2015, p. 40.
  8. ^ Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre; Adams, Matthew S., eds. (2018). Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 2. Stockholm University Press. p. 31. doi:10.16993/bas. ISBN 978-91-7635-072-0.
  9. ^ a b Zimmer 2015, p. 36.
  10. ^ Avrich 1988, p. 187.
  11. ^ Avrich 1988, p. 191.
  12. ^ Avrich 1988, p. 294.
  13. ^ Allentuck, Marcia. "An Unremarked Yiddish Translation of Mill's On Liberty." The Mill News Letter 5:1 (Fall 1969): 10.
  14. ^ Zimmer 2015, p. 21.
  15. ^ Zimmer 2015, p. 35.
  16. ^ Falk, Candace, ed. (2008). Emma Goldman, Vol. 2: A Documentary History of the American Years, Volume 2: Making Speech Free, 1902–1909. University of Illinois Press. p. 534. ISBN 978-0-252-07543-8.

Bibliography

Further reading

  • Torres, Anna Elena; Zimmer, Kenyon, eds. (May 2023). With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism. University of Illinois Press. pp. 12, 84n39, 163, 171n60. ISBN 978-0-252-04501-1.
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