Novick, Peysakh

NOVICK, PEYSAKH (1891–1989). During his forty-nine years of service (1939–1988) as editor of the Left-wing Yiddish newspaper the Morgen Freiheit, Peysakh (Paul) Novick was the most prominent leader and spokesman of the Yiddish-language Left-progressive movement in the United States. Novick was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russia, and in his teens turned away from a religious upbringing to join the youth wing of the Bund, the Jewish socialist party in czarist Russia. When he came to the United States in 1913 he was already a Bundist newspaper veteran. In New York he worked for the Yiddish socialist daily paper, the Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward), contributed to other Yiddish periodicals, and became an activist in the Jewish Socialist Federation. He returned to Russia in 1917, where he edited or wrote for Bundist newspapers in Warsaw, Kiev, Vilna, and Minsk.

When Novick returned to New York in 1921 he was a sympathizer of the Soviet government. He joined forces with Moissaye J. Olgin and other pro-Soviet Left-wingers to detach the Jewish Socialist Federation from the Socialist Party, after which they joined the above-ground organization of the underground Communist Party. On 2 April 1922, Olgin, Novick, and other Jewish socialists and radicals launched a new Yiddish daily newspaper, the Freiheit (Freedom; later renamed Morgen Freiheit, or Morning Freedom). Olgin and Shakhno Epstein were the newspaper’s first coeditors and Novick the city editor. From the start the Freiheit was pro-Soviet and pro-Communist but not an official party organ. The Freiheit’s political stance, its championship of literary Yiddish, and its brash, polemical style attracted to it some of the foremost younger Yiddish poets and writers in America as well as a readership that was younger and more working class than that of other Yiddish newspapers. The Freiheit inspired and helped to build a network of Yiddish cultural organizations and institutions. It also exerted a militant influence among the unions of the needle trades, among others. By the 1930s the paper’s readership was said to be approximately forty to fifty thousand. Never self-sustaining, it was supported financially by the generous annual contributions of its readers.

Novick became the Morgen Freiheifs editor after Olgin’s death on 22 November 1939 and remained editor until the paper’s demise on 11 September 1988. Though the Freiheit was supportive of the Communist Party, in practice it kept a certain distance from the Party’s assimilationist stand on Jewish and especially Yiddish cultural questions. More pronounced tensions with the Party surfaced as a result of the famous February 1956 address by the then Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev. The resulting crisis of conscience grew as reports verified that up to four hundred Yiddish cultural workers had earlier been arrested on trumped-up charges, that there were many deaths, and that twenty-four leading literary figures had been executed in August 1952. In this turbulent atmosphere and under Novick’s guidance the Freiheit changed itself into an independent, democratic socialist newspaper.

In June 1967, Freiheit defied the leadership of the Communist Party on the assessment of the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War, Novick insisting that it was defensive on Israel’s part. For defying Party discipline on this issue and for criticizing anti-Semitic acts and propaganda in the Soviet Union, Novick was expelled from the Communist Party in April 1973, an act which did not affect his popular support.

Novick was himself one of the most prolific writers in the world of Yiddish journalism. Counting his years as assistant to Olgin, he also enjoyed its longest editorial career. He wrote almost all the daily editorials for the Freiheit during his editorship, a weekly political review article, a chatty column (“Day In, Day Out”) three times a week, and other items under various names. Into old age, he was known for his fluency, his literary allusions, and his wit. He was also for decades a popular lecturer for left-wing Jewish audiences in the United States and abroad; his visits were often used to raise needed funds for the Freiheit. Novick died less than a year after his newspaper folded and a few months before his ninety-eighth birthday.

Novick, Paul. The Character and Aims of the Morning Freiheit. New York: Morning Freiheit, 1962.

Novick, Paul. The National and Jewish Question in the Light of Reality. New York: Morning Freiheit, 1970.