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Manger, Itzik [Baruch Vladek] : HUMESH LIDER [AUTHOR INSCRIBED TO LEADING JEWISH SOCIALIST BARUCH VLADEK]

Varshe [Warsaw]: Aleynenyu, 1935

1st edition, Original Printed stiff paper wrappers, Small 8vo, 68 pages. Manger, the namesake of Israel’s Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish Literature, here, on the title page, inscribes one of his most important works to fellow Yiddish literary personality and Socialist leader Baruch Vladek, in the year following publication. In Yiddish. Title translates as “Bible Songs/Verses.” Includes author and title in Polish letters on reverse of title page: “Icyk Manger, Chumesz-lider.” Isaac (Itzik) Manger (1901-1969) was a leading Yiddish poet, playwright and author. Born in Czernowitz into a Yiddish literary home–Manger’s father, Hillel, whose bohemianism and bouts of depression kept the family on the move, coined the Yiddish phrase literatoyre, a felicitous pairing of “literature” and “Torah”--the young Manger fled to Romania in WWI, where in 1918 he began to write Yiddish poetry.After the war Manger moved “to Bucharest, where he became a leading spokesman for the Yiddish secular movement in Greater Romania, wrote for the local Yiddish press, and did the lecture circuit, speaking on the ballad as well as on Spanish, Romanian, and Gypsy folklore.Manger was 27 when he arrived in Warsaw as a Romanian poet with thick, disheveled flowing hair, blazing eyes, and a lighted cigarette perpetually dangling from his lips. To the Yiddish literary scene of that city, Manger was an exotic newcomer. He would call this period (1928–1938) ‘my most beautiful decade.' It was by far his most productive.Manger granted interviews and published articles in Literarishe bleter; gave readings at the Writers Club, where he recited his poetry from memory; published Shtern afn dakh (Stars on the Roof; 1929), a meticulously edited volume of his verse; put out 12 issues of his own 4-page literary journal called Getseylte verter (Counted Words; 1929–1930) and filled mostly with his own manifestos, poems, and literary musings; invented a new genre, which he called Khumesh-lider (Bible Songs; 1935); rewrote the Purim megilah (Megile-lider; 1936); penned a personalized history of Yiddish literature from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century (Noente geshtaltn [Close Images]; 1938); published three more volumes of verse, Lamtern in vint (Lantern in the Wind; 1933), Velvl Zbarzher shraybt briv tsu malkele der sheyner (Velvl Zbarzher Writes Letters to the Beautiful Malkele; 1937), and Demerung in shpigl (Dusk in the Mirror; 1937). He also compiled Felker zingen (Nations Sing; 1936), an anthology of European folk songs; wrote Di vunderlekhe lebns-bashraybung fun Shmuel-Abe Abervo (Dos bukh fun gan-eydn) (The Amazing Life Story of Shmuel-Abe Abervo [The Book of the Garden of Eden]; 1939), a fictional autobiography in prose; witnessed the production of two plays, loosely based on Avrom Goldfadn’s work: Di kishef-makherin (The Witch) and Dray Hotsmakhs (Three Hotsmakhs); composed lyrics for the Yiddish cabaret and the fledgling Yiddish movie industry; crisscrossed Poland knowing very little Polish; and entered into a common-law marriage with Rokhl Oyerbakh. In January 1930, Manger was one of the four youngest initiates elected to the Yiddish PEN club. The other three were Yisroel Rabon, Iosef Papiernikov, and Isaac Bashevis Singer…. In March 1951….He married Genia Nadir, the widow of the poet Moyshe Nadir, and a jubilee committee chaired by the poet Mani Leyb published a beautiful edition of his Lid un balade (Song and Ballad) in 1952…..In 1958, Manger made his first trip to Israel, where he finally settled, found a new mass audience in both Yiddish and Hebrew, and died in that country….On 31 October 1968, the Itsik Manger Prize was established in Israel. His notebooks, manuscripts, and correspondence are housed at the Manger Archive at the National and University Library in Jerusalem” (Roskies in YIVO Encyclopedia). Borekh-Nakhmen Vladek-Tsharni (1886-1938, later known simply as Boruch Vladek) “joined the first advent of the Labor Zionist movement… After the Kishinev pogrom in 1903…and administered the student group ‘Talmide akiva’ (Students of R. Akiva), a circle of lovers of the Hebrew language. In January 1904 he was arrested for membership in the Labor Zionists and thrown into jail in Minsk. In the general cell for the political prisoners, he studied arithmetic, geography, and literature with the others. For him personally, jail served as an excellent school; he read a great deal there, became acquainted with the major figures in world literature, and already there became a favorite as an idealistic leader and extraordinary speaker. He was selected to be in charge of the politicals, and when governor of Minsk at the time, the liberal Aleksei Musin-Pushkin, paid a visit to the jail, Vladek made a speech with demands on behalf of the political arrestees. He was also in the leadership of a hunger strike that the politicals declared to gain tangible support to buttress their demands. In jail he—in part under the influence of the Bundists Samuil Bernshteyn and Kolya Teper who were then with him there—changed his political beliefs; he left the Labor Zionists and moved closer to the Bund; the 200-ruble bail for his release was furnished by the Bund. In September 1904, shortly after being freed from jail, he formally joined the Bund, and he was promptly introduced to the central assembly of Bundist workers’ vocations. It so happened at that time that there was a general strike of ‘shop assistants’ (prikazchikes), and taking advantage of the freer political atmosphere under Musin-Pushkin, people were called a mass meeting in a large school, at which Vladek gave his celebrated speech which began with the words, ‘Kamashi, kaloshi—khoroshii tovar’ (Shoe, rubbers—good merchandise), the words with which shop clerks entice customers into their shops. After the historic events of January 9, 1905, the Bund in St. Petersburg attempted to lead a general strike in Minsk as well, and they sent Vladek to get the workers at a large factory to come join in. Not far from the tanneries in Lyakhovka, a division of Cossacks swept down on them violently with blackjacks and swords, and left him bloodied in the snow on the street (scars from the blows sustained remained on his face for his entire life). The nineteen-year-old revolutionary could no longer stay in Minsk—the police were now hunting for him—and the party sent him on illegal propaganda work into the ‘district,’ meaning through the towns of Byelorussia and Lithuania. For the greater portion of 1905, the ‘second Lassalle’ (as people were now calling him) cooled his heels in Vilna, as he became a legend in the city. At the time he also spent several months in the Number 14 cell in the jail at Lukishkes Square (Lukiškiu aikšte) in Vilna. At the end of that year, he had to flee from Vilna, and through the Polish district committee of the Bund, he carried out revolutionary work in Warsaw, Lublin (where he was saved from arrest and even from death thanks to his extraordinary boldness and courage), Lodz (where he was tossed in jail and from which he was dispatched with a procession of convicts back to the Minsk jail), and then back to Vilna. He participated in the seventh congress of the Bund in Lemberg (August 1906). In this Polish period, he acquired—it is unknown precisely when and how—his Polish surname Vladek which he later, in the United States, adopted for his new family name….He also took part in the London conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (May 1907) and there supported Lenin’s Bolshevik faction. In the same two violent years, Vladek’s literary talents began to emerge. His first piece in Yiddish was ‘Der balebos un di revolutsyonere yugend (a brif fun provints)’ (The head man and the revolutionary youth, a letter from the provinces), published in the Bundist daily Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper) 20 (March 14, 1906) in Vilna….Later that same year, he published in the same paper ‘Briv fun poyln’ (Letter from Poland) now using the name ‘Vladek’ …. Vladek wrote the series ‘Funem togbukh [later, notitsn] fun a val-agitator’ (From the diary [later, notes] of an agitator at the ramparts), polemical and theoretical articles in the newspaper.”Vladek continued to contribute literary and political articles to Bundist and unaffiliated Yiddish periodicals in Poland. “Vladek came to the United States in late 1907 and took up writing immediately for the monthly Tsukunft (Future) in New York, where between 1909 and 1938 (the last year of his life) he published his best literary works, among them: the semi-fictional series ‘Kinder fun folk’ (Children of the people); poems; descriptions of America and travel narratives;” and other works. He continued to publish widely in the American Yiddish labor and secular press. “On his fiftieth birthday in 1936, the Forward Association in New York published…the book, B. vladek in lebn un shafn (The life and work of B. Vladek) (437 pp.), with an introduction by the editors, a biography of Vladek by Y. Kesin, a bibliography of Vladek’s writings compiled by Yefim Yeshurin, and a great number of Vladek’s works—primarily those published in America….In his later years, Vladek also contributed to the socialist press in English, publishing articles and reviews in: Nation, Herald Tribune, Locomotive Engineers Journal, and others. In 1911 Vladek married Clara Richman, a nurse at the Henry Street Settlement on the East Side. Soon thereafter they moved to Philadelphia, where he became in December 1912 manager of the local Forverts office….In 1915 he became an American citizen, and in 1916 moved to New York where he became city editor of Forverts and managed the second electoral campaign of Meyer London for Congress that same year. In 1918 he became the general business manager of the Forverts and held this position until the end of his life. He forged such a successful political career, of course, in and t

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