Itzik Manger (1901-1969) was a prominent Yiddish poet, dramatist, novelist, a self-proclaimed folk bard, visionary, and ‘master tailor’ of the written word. A Jew from Bucovina, who lived in Romania, Poland, France, England and finally in Israel.

Itzik Manger was born 1901 in Czernowitz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today it is called Cernivtsi, in Ukraine. The city was home to Ukrainians and Poles, Germans and Austrians, Romanians and Moldovans, Armenians, and Jews (1930 about 27 % of the population). Manger attended in German school, but was expelled for bad behaviour. Instead, he hung around the Yiddish theatre.

In 1918 Czernowitz became part of Romania. Manger settled in Bucharest and wrote for the local Yiddish newspapers. In 1929 he moved to Warsaw, to the capital of the Yiddish cultural world. Soon Manger was accepted into the Yiddish PEN club, which brought together some of the greatest Jewish writers of the time, among them Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Manger left Warsaw for Paris, Paris for London, London for New York, and New York for Tel Aviv, where he died in 1969.