Illustration to Sholem Aleichem, “The Haunted Tailor”

Grigory Hersh Inger was a Moscow-born painter and illustrator whose work was invested in the development of modern Yiddish culture. Inger attended art school in Kiev under the instruction of artist Mark Epshteyn. At the time, the school was one of only three Jewish art schools worldwide; it trained a generation of Soviet Jewish artists. Inger was a member of the secular, socialist Jewish cultural organization Kultur-Lige, founded in 1918, which sought to promote and advance Yiddish literature, theater, and culture in Russia. Artists like Inger combined traditional Jewish folklore with contemporary concepts to produce a new style of art that would represent and produce a modern Jewish culture. In addition to painting, Inger illustrated the works of Sholem Aleichem.