Shmuel Niger (1883–1955)

Shmuel Niger was the pen name of Shmuel Charney (or Tscharny), born to a Hassidic Jewish family in Dukor, a small village near Minsk in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus). His parents were Zev Volf and Brokhe Charney. Among his siblings were Baruch Charney Vladeck, future managing editor of The Jewish Daily Forward, and Daniel Charney, who became a celebrated Yiddish poet, writer, and journalist. Their father died in 1889, when Shmuel was six years old. He was a child prodigy, studying Talmud at yeshivas in Berezin and Minsk in preparation to become a rabbi. Instead, he later moved into the secular and political world. In 1904, he helped found 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 illegal political activities several times, but avoided execution after the intervention of family and friends. After initially writing in Russian and Hebrew, he began to write and publish and worked as an editor for Yiddish periodicals in Vilna, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. His 1907 essay on Sholem Asch was his first significant critical article and also helped to introduce the still relatively unknown Asch to a much broader audience. In 1908, together with playwright A. Vayter and essayist S. Gorelik, he founded the short-lived journal Literarishe Monatshriftn (Literary Monthly Journal) in Vilna/Vilnius, widely credited with launching the Yiddish literary renaissance. The following year, he entered the University of Bern, Switzerland, to study philosophy, world literature, and European literary criticism. In 1912, he returned to Vilna to edit a new monthly, Di Yidishe Velt, which quickly became the authoritative journal of Yiddish belles lettres. That same year he published a collection of his early essays, Vegn Yidishe Shrayber: Kritishe Artiklen (On Yiddish Writers: Critical Articles). In 1919, after being imprisoned once again, Niger immigrated to the USA, where he first worked at The Jewish Daily Forward before joining the Yiddish liberal daily Tog (Day), where he worked for the rest of his life. He became the leading critic of Yiddish literary life, writing weekly reviews of books and articles on literary trends. He also co-edited the literary monthly Di Tsukunft from 1941 to 1947. He published Di Tsveyshprakhikayt fun Undzer Literatur (The Bilingualism of our Literature) in 1941. Niger was a pillar of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research from its beginning, contributing important studies to its publications. He edited the complete edition of the works of I.L. Peretz, on whom he wrote a definitive study published in 1952. In 1948, Niger helped to found the Congress for Jewish Culture. In 1954, he co-edited its Leksikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur (Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature); he died while the first volume was in press. A number of his other works were published posthumously.