Moyshe Nadir


Yitzchak Rayz, better known by his pen name Moyshe Nadir was an American Yiddish language writer and satirist. Rayz was born in the town of Narayev, in eastern Galicia, then Austro-Hungary. He died in 1943, in Woodstock, New York.

Biography

In 1898, at the age of 13, Rayz immigrated to New York and adopted the Americanized name Isaac Reiss. Within a few years his work was published widely in the New York Yiddish press, under a variety of pseudonyms, including Rinnalde Rinaldine, Dilensee Mirkarosh, Der Royzenkavalir, Doctor Hotzikl, and, finally, Moishe Nadir. The name "Nadir" is a Yiddish expression meaning "here you are" or "that's for you," but can also mean "take this and choke on it."
As a teenager, he wrote for Der Groyser Kundes and later co-edited Der Yiddisher Gazlon with Jacob Adler. He wrote for an assortment of Communist Yiddish publications including the Frayhayt newspaper and its successor Morgn Frayhayt and the magazines Der Signal and Der Hammer. When his sharp-tongued theater reviews caused him to be banned from theatrical productions, he resorted to attending plays in disguise. His own plays were performed by Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theater, Zuni Maude and Yosl Cutler's Modicut puppet theater, Artef and the Federal Theater Project. Among his better known poems are the erotic Vilde Royzen and his 1932 Rivington Strit.
After a long association with the Freiheit and the Morgen Freiheit, Rayz began to distance himself from the Communist cause with the onset of the show trials in the Soviet Union and publicly broke with the Morgn Frayhayt in the wake of the Molotiv-Ribbentrop Pact. He set out his reasons in “Di, vos blayben mit der Morgn Frayhayt” in response to Morgn Frayhayt editor Moissaye Olgin’s “Di vos gayen avek”. Rayz discusses his relationship to the Communist Party in his posthumous Moyde Ani.

Published works

Yiddish originals:
English translations: