Editing Emma Goldman (section)

=== Rochester, New York ===
[[File:Emma goldman 1886.jpg|thumb|upright|Emma Goldman in 1886]]
In 1885, her sister Helena made plans to move to New York in the United States to join her sister Lena and her husband. Goldman wanted to join her sister, but their father refused to allow it. Despite Helena's offer to pay for the trip, Abraham turned a deaf ear to their pleas. Desperate, Goldman threatened to throw herself into the [[Neva River]] if she could not go. Their father finally agreed. On December 29, 1885, Helena and Emma arrived at New York City's [[Castle Garden]], the entry for immigrants.{{sfn|Wexler|1984|p=27}}

They settled upstate, living in the [[Rochester, New York|Rochester]] home which Lena had made with her husband Samuel. Fleeing the rising [[antisemitism]] of Saint Petersburg, their parents and brothers joined them a year later. Goldman began working as a [[seamstress]], sewing overcoats for more than ten hours a day, earning two and a half dollars a week. She asked for a raise and was denied; she quit and took work at a smaller shop nearby.{{sfn|Wexler|1984|p=30}}

At her new job, Goldman met a fellow worker named Jacob Kershner, who shared her love for books, dancing, and traveling, as well as her frustration with the monotony of factory work. After four months, they married in February 1887.{{sfn|Falk|1984|pp=15–16}} Once he moved in with Goldman's family, their relationship faltered. On their wedding night she discovered that he was impotent; they became emotionally and physically distant. Before long he became jealous and suspicious and threatened to commit suicide should she leave him. Meanwhile, Goldman was becoming more engaged with the political turmoil around her, particularly the aftermath of executions related to the 1886 [[Haymarket affair]] in Chicago and the [[anti-authoritarian]] political philosophy of [[anarchism]].{{sfn|Wexler|1984|p=31}}

Less than a year after the wedding, the couple were divorced; Kershner begged Goldman to return and threatened to poison himself if she did not. They reunited, but after three months she left once again. Her parents considered her behavior "loose" and refused to allow Goldman into their home.{{sfn|Drinnon|1961|pp=15–17}} Carrying her sewing machine in one hand and a bag with five dollars in the other, she left Rochester and headed southeast to New York City.{{sfn|Chalberg|1991|p=27}}