Paul Novick

Pesakh "Paul" Novick (7 September 1891 – 21 August 1989) was a radical Jewish-American journalist, political commentator, and editor. Novick is best remembered as the long time editor-in-chief of the Communist Party Yiddish-language daily Morgen Freiheit (Morning Freedom) and of the Communist-affiliated English-language magazine Jewish Life. Novick was expelled from the Communist Party in 1972 for publicly charging the Soviet Union with engaging in systemic anti-Semitism.

Biography

Early years

Pesakh Novick, better known as Paul Novick, was born in 1891 in Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire (today Belarus).

In 1920 he emigrated to the United States, to which he gained citizenship in 1927.[1]

Political career

In 1953, during the height of the Second Red Scare, the United States Department of Justice announced that it would attempt to strip Novick of his naturalized American citizenship and to have him deported on the grounds that he swore to false statements during his 1927 citizenship proceedings.[1]

Expulsion

Death and legacy

Novick died, aged 97, of congestive heart failure and kidney deficiency at a hospital in Peekskill, New York.[2]

Novick's wife, Shirley Novick, was the subject of Red Shirley, a short documentary film produced in 2011 by New York City rock icon Lou Reed.[3]

References
  1. "Seek Revocation of Editor's Citizenship," Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle [Milwaukee], Sept. 4, 1953, pg. 9.
  2. Flint, Peter B. (22 August 1989). "Paul Novick is Dead; Editor, 97, Helped Start Yiddish Daily". New York Times. Retrieved 15 April 2018.
  3. Rokhl Kafrissen, "Lou Reed's Red Shirley," Dynamic Yiddishkayt for the New Millennium, October 27, 2013.

Works

Further reading
  • Gennady Estraikh, "Professing Leninist Yiddishkayt: The Decline of American Yiddish Communism," American Jewish History, vol. 96, no. 1 (March 2010), pp. 33–60. In JSTOR
  • Peter B. Flynt, "Paul Novick is Dead; Editor, 97, Helped Start Yiddish Daily," New York Times, Aug. 22, 1989.
  • Matthew Hoffman, "The Red Divide: The Conflict between Communists and their Opponents in the American Yiddish Press," American Jewish History, vol. 96, no. 1 (March 2010), pp. 1–31. In JSTOR
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