Moyshe-Leyb Halpern

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Moyshe-Leyb Halpern (January 2, 1886 – August 31, 1932) was a Yiddish-language modernist poet. He was born and raised in a traditional Jewish household in Zlotshev, Galicia and brought to Vienna at the age of 12 in 1898 to study commercial art. He then began writing modernist poetry in German. Upon returning to his hometown in 1907, he switched to writing in Yiddish.

In 1908, Halpern emigrated to New York City in order to avoid the military draft. There he became associated with a group of Yiddish poets called Di Yunge (The Young Ones). He published his first book of poetry in 1919, In nyu york (In New York). That same year, he married. He had a son in 1923. His second book, Di goldene pave (The Golden Peacock), was published in 1924. Halpern also wrote for satirical magazines and Frayhayt (Freedom), a communist Yiddish newspaper. He died of a heart attack in New York in 1932.

[edit] References

• Flanzbaum, Hilene, coordinating editor. Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, pp. 245-6