A Jew from Bucovina, Manger lived in Romania, Poland, France, England, the US (New York), Canada (Montreal) and finally Israel.

[1] His father, Hillel Helfer-Manger, was a skilled tailor in love with literature, which he referred to as 'literatoyreh' (a portmanteau of the Yiddish words literatura and Toyreh).

At the same time, Manger continued to publish his own works, including a series of modernist poems inspired by the Oral Torah (Itzik's Midrash, 1935), a dramatic rewriting of the Purim story from the Book of Esther (Songs of the Megillah, 1936), a loose adaptation of Abraham Goldfaden's The Witch of Botoşani (Hotzmakh's Shpiel, 1937), a series of vignettes on the history of Yiddish literature (Familiar Portraits, 1938), and three more volumes of poetry (Lantern in the Wind, 1933; Velvl Zbarzher Writes Letters to Malkele the Beautiful, 1937; and Twilight in the Mirror, 1937).

Manger's Itzik's Midrash and Songs of the Megillah deserve special mention, as they represent his first attempts to re-write old, familiar material through a modernist lens.

In Itzik's Midrash, Manger presents a modern commentary on the classic Bible stories by anachronistically placing his characters in contemporary Eastern Europe.

Combined with his 1937 play Hotzmakh's Shpiel, these three revival texts secured Manger his international reputation as "the master recloaker of the oldest and the newest literary traditions.

In 1940, Manger fled to Marseilles, Tunis, Liverpool, and finally London, where he became a British citizen and remained unhappily for the next eleven years.

Prominent members of Israeli society, including politicians Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Teddy Kollek, made highly publicised appearances at the performances.

[10] Manger's poem "Oyfn veg shteyt a boym" ("On the Road Stands a Tree") has been set to music and has entered the repertoire of Yiddish song, for example as a 1951 hit for Leo Fuld.