Moyshe Nadir
American Yiddish writer and poet (1885-1943)
Yitzchak Rayz (1885, Narayiv – 1943, Woodstock), better known by his pen name Moyshe Nadir (Yiddish: משה נאַדיר; also transliterated "Moishe") was an American Yiddish language writer and satirist. Rayz was born in the town of Narayiv, 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 (The Big Prankster) and later co-edited Der Yiddisher Gazlon (The Yiddish Bandit) with Jacob Adler. He wrote for an assortment of Communist Yiddish publications including the Frayhayt (Freedom) newspaper and its successor Morgn Frayhayt (Morning Freedom) and the magazines Der Signal (The Signal) and Der Hammer (The 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 (Arbeter Teater Faraband, Workers Theater Alliance) and the Federal Theater Project. Among his better known poems are the erotic Vilde Royzen (Wild Roses, 1915) and his 1932 Rivington Strit (Rivington Street).
“Moyshe Nadir” enters the record as american Yiddish writer and poet (1885-1943). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Moyshe, Nadir and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Moyshe Nadir” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Moyshe, Nadir and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4311974. VIAF identifies the subject as 815272. The Library of Congress control number is nr90008320. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885, 1943, 1898 and 1915.
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This entry incorporates text from “Moyshe Nadir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.