Manger was born to a Jewish family in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary (later Cernăuți, Romania and now Chernivtsi, Ukraine) in 1901.[1] His father, Hillel Helfer-Manger, was a skilled tailor in love with literature, which he referred to as 'literatoyreh' (a portmanteau of the Yiddish words literatura and Toyreh). As a teenager, Manger attended the Kaiserlich-Königliches III. Staatsgymnasium in Czernowitz, where he studied German literature until he was expelled for pranks and bad behaviour.[2] He exchanged this traditional education for the backstage atmosphere of the Yiddish theatre.
Young poet
In 1921, Manger began publishing his early poems and ballads in several new literary journals founded in the aftermath of World War I. Soon afterwards, he settled in Bucharest and wrote for the local Yiddish newspapers while giving occasional lectures on Spanish, Romanian, and Romanifolklore.[3]
In 1927, Manger came to Warsaw, the spiritual and intellectual center of Ashkenazi Jewry and "the most inspiring city in Poland."[4] Manger lived in the capital of the Yiddish cultural world for the next decade, which became the most productive years of his entire career. In 1929, Manger published his first book of poetry, Shtern afn dakh (Stars on the Roof), in Warsaw to critical acclaim. By the following year, Manger was so well known that he was admitted to the Yiddish P.E.N. club, along with Isaac Bashevis, Israel Rabon, and Joseph Papiernikov.[5]
Literary success
Under the ruins of Poland
a golden head lies
both the head and the destruction
are very true.
— Itzik Manger, Under the Ruins of Poland
Between 1929 and 1938, Manger took the Warsaw literary world by storm. He gave frequent readings of his own poetry at the Writers' Club, was interviewed by all the major Warsaw Yiddish papers, published articles in the prestigious journal Literarishe Bleter [he] (Literary Pages), issued his own literary journal called Chosen Words filled with his poetry, fiction, and artistic manifestos. At the same time, Manger continued to publish his own works, including a series of modernist poems inspired by the Oral Torah (Itzik's Midrash, 1935), a dramatic rewriting of the Purim story from the Book of Esther (Songs of the Megillah, 1936), a loose adaptation of Abraham Goldfaden's The Witch of Botoşani (Hotzmakh's Shpiel, 1937), a series of vignettes on the history of Yiddish literature (Familiar Portraits, 1938), and three more volumes of poetry (Lantern in the Wind, 1933; Velvl Zbarzher Writes Letters to Malkele the Beautiful, 1937; and Twilight in the Mirror, 1937).
Working with Biblical themes
Manger's Itzik's Midrash and Songs of the Megillah deserve special mention, as they represent his first attempts to re-write old, familiar material through a modernist lens. In Itzik's Midrash, Manger presents a modern commentary on the classic Bible stories by anachronistically placing his characters in contemporary Eastern Europe. Manger's playful attitude towards the original text is self-evident; in the introduction he writes, "As I wrote this book, the rogue's cap of the Yiddish Purim play hovered always before my eyes."[6] Inspired by the Purimshpiel genre, which used a traditional story to mock the norms and expectations of Jewish religious life in previous centuries, Manger's Midrash radically revises traditional portrayals of Biblical characters by requiring them to justify their actions according to modern norms and values. Traditionally valued characters such as Abraham and Sarah are harshly critiqued, while under-represented characters like Hagar and Ishmael are given a voice.
In Songs of the Megillah, Manger uses a similar technique to politicise and de-sacralise the Biblical text read aloud on Purim. Once again, Manger's introduction classifies the book as "a kind of mischief-making on the model of Purim players in every age."[7] Like Itzik's Midrash, Songs of the Megillah is a modern, radical retelling of the story of Esther set in contemporary Eastern Europe. Manger even introduces a new character into the narrative: Fastrigosso, Esther's jilted lover and a member of the Needles and Thread Tailors' Union, who conspires to assassinate King Ahashverosh to win back Esther's affections. Combined with his 1937 play Hotzmakh's Shpiel, these three revival texts secured Manger his international reputation as "the master recloaker of the oldest and the newest literary traditions."[8]
Leaving Poland
Manger never acquired Polish citizenship and was forced to leave the country in the light of legal difficulties, having been stripped of his Romanian citizenship and becoming stateless. Manger left for Paris in 1938, an exile from his creative homeland. However, Paris was not safe for long. In 1940, Manger fled to Marseilles, Tunis, Liverpool, and finally London, where he became a British citizen and remained unhappily for the next eleven years.[9] In 1951 he arrived in the United States, where he met his future wife, Ghenya Nadir, the widow of writer Moyshe Nadir. The two lived in the Sea Gate neighbourhood of Brooklyn. Manger made a visit to Israel in 1958, and then a series of short visits there every few years in 1961, 1963, and 1965. An ailing Manger returned to Israel in 1966, where he remained in a sanatorium in Gedera until his death.
Acclaim in Israel and elsewhere
Manger achieved significant success in Israeli literary and theatrical circles when, in 1965, Dov Seltzer directed a highly popular production of Manger's Songs of the Megillah. The musical was a great success, setting a new record in Israeli theatre with its more than 400 performances. Prominent members of Israeli society, including politicians Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Teddy Kollek, made highly publicised appearances at the performances. When he died in 1969, Manger was mourned as an Israeli national poet.
Romanian Jewish playwright Israil Bercovici adapted a collection of Manger's poems into a two-act stage piece, Mangheriada, which premiered 6 April 1968 at the Romanian State Jewish Theater in Bucharest.[10]
Manger's poem "Oyfn veg shteyt a boym" ("On the Road Stands a Tree") has been set to music and has entered the repertoire of Yiddish song, for example as a 1951 hit for Leo Fuld.
Hertz Grosbard recited many of his works in so called "word concerts".
Shortly before his death, the Itzik Manger Prize for outstanding Yiddish writing was established. The inaugural prize was given to Manger himself at a banquet on 31 October 1968. The banquet was attended by Golda Meir, then the prime minister of Israel, and by Zalman Shazar, then president.[11] Subsequently, the prize was awarded annually until about 2000.
^A trickster at heart, Manger was fond of creating fictional biographies for himself and passing them off as truth. In his most famous fake biography, submitted to the editors of the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre", printed as fact, and widely believed, Manger writes that he was born in Berlin in 1900 and did not learn Yiddish until the age of fourteen. A. A. Roback, The Story of Yiddish Literature (New York: Yiddish Scientific Institute, 1940), 329.
^David Roskies and Leonard Wolf, Introduction to Itzik Manger, The World According to Itzik: Selected Poetry and Prose. Translated and edited by Leonard Wolf (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), xiii.
^Manger, The World According to Itzik, xx. It was around this time that Manger changed his name from the formal sounding Yitzkhok to the childlike diminutive Itzik, thus actualizing his self-transformation from poet to folk bard.
^Bercovici, Israil, O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România ("One hundred years of Jewish theatre in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă [ro]. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998)
^Roskies, David G.; Wolf, Leonard (2013). "Introduction". The World According to Itzik: Selected Poetry and Prose. Open Road Media. ISBN9781480440777. Anthology of Manger's writing.
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