Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (1886–1932)

Moyshe-Leyb Halpern was born to a Jewish family in the town of Zlotchev, Austrian Galicia, (present-day Ukraine). He was educated in a traditional Jewish elementary school as well as a Polish-language Baron Hirsch school. In 1898, at age 12, he was sent to Vienna as an apprentice to a commercial sign painter. There he developed an interest in literature and philosophy and began writing modernist poetry in German. He returned home in 1907, and under the influence of the growing Yiddish literary culture, switched to writing in Yiddish. In 1908, to avoid the military draft, Halpern emigrated to the USA, settling in New York City. There he worked at a variety of jobs and associated with the group of avant-garde Yiddish poets called Di Yunge. In 1912, he got a job as an assistant editor at the new weekly Folks-tsaytung (People’s Newspaper) in Montreal, Canada. However, after 24 issues, the newspaper ceased publication, and could not even cover the cost of Halpern's trip back to New York. Like Charles Baudelaire, with whom he is sometimes compared, Halpern cultivated the image of the "poete maudit," living on the fringes of society: the theme of urban chaos pervaded his first collection of poetry, In Nyu York (In New York), published in 1919. The same year he married Rayzele Barron, with whom he had a son. Halpern became a staff writer for the newly-founded Di frayheyt (Freedom), a Communist daily newspaper, in 1922, and also continued to contribute to other periodicals. His second book, Di Goldene Pave (The Golden Peacock), appeared in 1924. He went on several successful speaking tours in the Northeast and Midwest over the next few years. By 1926. he had broken with Di frayheyt, which criticized both his poetry and his refusal to toe the Communist Party line. In 1927-1929, during a period of financial difficulties, he moved with his family to Los Angeles, California. He returned to New York City, where he died of a heart attach at age 46 in 1932. Two volumes of his poetry were published posthumously, as Moyshe Leyb Halpern (1934).