Mani Leib (1883–1953)

Mani Leib was the pseudonym of Mani Leib Brahinsky, born to an impoverished Jewish family in Nezhin, Russian Empire (present-day Nizhyn, Ukraine). He was one of eight children. His father Hirsch Brahinsky sold furs, hides, and animals at regional fairs. His mother Sarah supported the family by selling hens, geese and eggs. In his memoir A mayse vegn zikh (A Story About Myself), Mani Leib describes her as full of spontaneous rhymes, poems, and epigrams. At the age of 11, he left school to be apprenticed to a bootmaker. As a teenager, he took part in illegal socialist activities, for which he was imprisoned. He emigrated to the USA at age 22 in 1905, and settled in New York City in 1906. There he worked in shoe factories, devoting his precious free time to writing. He began his literary career by translating Russian and Ukrainian poetry into Yiddish for the Jewish Daily Forward (Forverts). He then published his own poems in the Forward, among other periodicals, and later became a member of its editorial staff. He helped form the avant-garde Yiddish literary group called Di Yunge and establish its art-for-art's-sake poetic principles. In 1925-1926, he was co-editor with Reuben Iceland of Der Inzl (The Island), one of the principal anthologies of Di Yunge. In addition to his numerous volumes of poetry, Mani Leib also wrote stories in verse for children. The best known is his classic book Yingl Tsingl Khvat (1922), illustrated by the great Russian artist El Lissitzky. Mani Leib continued to work as a shoemaker throughout his life, and he referenced his profession in the poem "I Am." He contracted tuberculosis at age 50 in the miserable working conditions of the factories and spent two years in a sanatorium. His reputation and influence continued to grow even after his death, when his collected work was published as Lider un Baladn (Songs and Ballads) in 1955 and Sonetn (Sonnets) in 1961. His long relationship with poet Roshelle Weprinsky was documented in Briv: 1918–1953 (Letters: 1918-53), edited and published by her in 1980.