Shmuel (Samuel) Niger | |
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| Born | Shmuel Ṭsharni 15 June 1883 |
| Died | 24 December 1955, age 72 New York City, New York |
| Nationality | Russian Empire, United States |
| Other names | Samuel Niger, Samuel Charney, Shmuel Ṭsharni |
| Occupation | Yiddish literary critic |
Shmuel Niger (also Samuel Niger, pen name of Samuel Charney, 1883-1955) was a Yiddish writer, literary critic and historian and was one of the leading figures of Yiddish cultural work and Yiddishism in pre-revolution Russia. [1]
Shmuel Niger was born Shmuel Ṭsharni on 15 June 1883 in Dukora, a small village in Minsk Governorate, to Zev Volf and Brokhe Tsharni (née Hurwitz). His father, a fervent Lubavitcher Hasid, died in 1889, leaving Shmuel’s mother a widow with five sons (he being the fourth) and a daughter. [2] Niger’s two younger brothers also achieved renown. Baruch Charney Vladeck (1886–1938) became a leading socialist agitator and theoretician, general manager of The Jewish Daily Forward and New York City alderman while Daniel Charney (1888–1959) was a celebrated Yiddish poet, writer and journalist.
Niger was a child prodigy, studying Talmud until the age of 17 at yeshivas in Berezin and Minsk. He was preparing for rabbinic ordination when he instead moved into the secular and political world, having become attracted to secular culture and Zionism. [1] In 1904, he co-founded the Zionist Socialist Workers Party, and was a writer for the party paper Der nayer veg (The New Path). He was imprisoned and tortured for his political activity several times in Minsk, Kiev, Warsaw, Daugavpils (Dvinsk), Odessa, and Vilna, but he avoided execution after the intervention of family and friends.
After initial literary forays in Russian and Hebrew, he wrote, published and worked as an editor for many different Yiddish periodicals in Vilna, St. Petersburg and Moscow. His 1907 essay on Sholem Asch's drama Meshiekhs tsaytn (The Age of the Messiah) was his first significant Yiddish critical article and also helped to introduce the still relatively unknown Asch to a much broader audience. In 1908, together with the Bundist dramatist A. Vayter and the Zionist essayist S. Gorelik, he founded the short-lived journal Literarishe Monatshriftn (Literary Monthly Journal) in Vilna, which is widely credited with having launched the Yiddish literary renaissance. [3] The journal, while only publishing four issues, contained works of the bright young hopefuls of Yiddish literature, including Sholem Asch, Dovid Einhorn, Peretz Hirshbein, Hersh Dovid Nomberg, and Der Nister. Niger’s own essays on Asch, Nomberg, I. L. Peretz, and Avrom Reyzen set the high literary tone of the journal and heralded a level of literary and critical sophistication unprecedented in Yiddish literature. [1]
Assisted by Ber Borochov, he edited Der Pinkes (The Record Book, 1913), the first Yiddish scholarly volume devoted to the study of Yiddish literature, language, folklore, criticism, and bibliography. He also edited Zalman Reisen's Leksikon fun der Yidisher Literatur un Prese (Lexicon of Yiddish Literature and Press, 1914). These volumes helped to lay the foundation for the scholarly study of the Yiddish language and literature. [4]
In autumn 1919, Niger immigrated to the United States, where at first he worked at The Jewish Daily Forward (where his brother Baruch was manager), and a few weeks later at the Yiddish liberal daily Tog (Day), for which he worked until his death in 1955. [5] He became the leading critic of Yiddish literary life, [6] writing weekly reviews of books and articles on literary trends for Tog. He also co-edited the literary monthly Di Tsukunft from 1941 to 1947. Although the bulk of Niger’s literary criticism, mainly consisting of articles and essays from journals and newspapers, was never collected and published in book form, a bibliography compiled by Yefim Yeshurun lists 4,083 items by Niger and 1,607 items about him. [7]
Niger died in New York City on 24 December 1955, returning from a YIVO Executive Committee meeting. His funeral was attended by well over 1,000 people and news of his death led to the publication in the Jewish press of hundreds of articles about him worldwide. [5] [8] He was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens, New York.
Sholem Asch, also written Shalom Ash, was a Polish-Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States.
The Vilna Troupe, also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn and later Dramă şi Comedie, was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatre, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater. It was formed in and named after the city of Vilnius (Vilna) in the Russian Empire, later capital city of Lithuania. Distinctly Modernist, and strongly influenced by Russian literature and by the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski, their travels in Western Europe and later to Romania played a significant role in the dissemination of a disciplined approach to acting that continues to be influential in the present day.
Peretz Hirshbein ; 7 November 1880, Kleszczele, Grodno Governorate – 16 August 1948, Los Angeles) was a Yiddish-language playwright, novelist, journalist, travel writer, and theater director. Because his work focused more on mood than plot, he became known as "the Yiddish Maeterlinck". His work as a playwright and through his own short-lived but influential troupe, laid much of the groundwork for the second golden age of Yiddish theater that began shortly after the end of World War I. The dialogue of his plays is consistently vivid, terse, and naturalistic. Unusually for a Yiddish playwright, most of his works have pastoral settings: he had grown up the son of a miller, and made several attempts at farming.
YIVO is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish.
Nohum Shtif, was a Jewish linguist, literary historian, publisher, translator, and philologist of the Yiddish language and social activist. In his early years he wrote under the pen name Baal Dimion.
I. M.Weissenberg was a Yiddish-language writer in Warsaw, Poland. A disciple of I.L. Peretz, he began writing in 1904 and gained recognition for his 1906 masterpiece "A Shtetl". This novella, still regarded as his major achievement, was a literary response to a story by Sholem Asch called "The Shtetl". Unlike Asch's sentimental view of Eastern European Jewish unity in the waning years of the Russian Empire, Weissenberg used a naturalistic form to explore the deep divides between Jews, usually along class lines. In the process, he "stressed the impact of the new revolutionary doctrines upon the townlets, rousing them from their lethargy and shattering their foundations". . "Almost alone among Yiddish writers, Weissenberg was a worker and the son of workers," critic Ruth Wisse notes (p. 27), a fact which shaped both his subject matter and his use of language. He wrote several novels and plays, but remained a consistently strong writer of novellas and short stories.
Baruch Charney Vladeck was an American labor leader, manager of The Jewish Daily Forward for twenty years, and a member of the New York City Council.
Henech Kon or Henryk Kon was a Polish composer and cabaret performer.
Avrom Reyzen, known as Abraham Reisen, was a Belorussian Jewish writer, poet and editor. He was the elder brother of the Yiddishist Zalman Reisen.
Zalman Reisen, sometimes spelled Zalman Reyzen, was a lexicographer and literary historian of Yiddish literature.
Daniel Charney, was a Yiddish poet and journalist.
Der Tog was a Yiddish-language daily newspaper published in New York City from 1914 until 1971. The offices of Der Tog were located on the Lower East Side, at 185 and 187 East Broadway.
Hersh Dovid Nomberg, also written Hersh David Nomberg , was a Polish-Jewish writer, journalist, and essayist in the Yiddish language.
Zechariah Choneh Bergner (27 November 1893 – 20 August 1976), better known by his pen name Melech Ravitch, was a Canadian Yiddish poet and essayist. Ravitch was one of the world's leading Yiddish literary figures after the Holocaust. His poetry and essays appeared in the international Yiddish press and in anthologies, as well as in translation.
Samuel Leib Zitron, also known as S. L. Citron, was a Hebrew and Yiddish writer, historian, and literary critic. He contributed to the Yiddish press and to nearly all the Hebrew periodicals in the Diaspora over 50 years.
Jacob Dinezon, also known as Yankev Dinezon, was a Yiddish author and editor from Lithuania. There are various spellings of Dinezon's name in both Yiddish and English transliteration. Early in his career, Yiddish publications spelled his name דינעזאהן (Dinezohn). Later publications removed the ה and spelled his name דינעזאן or דינעזאָן (Dinezon). In English, his name has been spelled Dienesohn, Dinesen, Dineson, Dinezon, Dinesohn, Dineszohn, Dinezohn, Dynesohn, and Dynezon.
Der nayer veg was a Yiddish language weekly newspaper published from Vilna, Russia between May 11 [O.S. April 28] 1906 and January 25 [O.S. January 12] 1907. It was the central party organ of the Zionist Socialist Workers Party. It replaced the previous organ Der yidisher proletar. Officially the editor-publisher of the newspaper was R.Z. Zibel, but in reality the editorship was managed by Moishe Litvakov. The newspaper had a circulation of some 7,000 copies.
Abraham Zinger was a Russian-Jewish author, feuilletonist, and translator.
Mordecai Spector was a Yiddish novelist and editor from the Haskalah period. He is the author of about 50 realist novels and short stories depicting the life of ordinary people, workers, artisans, and Jewish families in his time. He is best known for his 1884 novel Der Yidisher Muzhik. He spent most of his life in the Ukraine region and moved to the United States in 1921.
Yehiel Yeshaya Trunk, better known by his pen name Y. Y. Trunk, was a Jewish literary critic and author. He is best known for his criticism of Sholem Aleichem, his imaginative reworkings of Jewish folklore, and his collections of humorous stories about Chełm.
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