MORDKHE SCHAECHTER
 
Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, Yiddish linguist, writer and educator, has had a long and productive association with YIVO since 1947, when he worked as a zamler for the YIVO Archives in the postwar D.P. camps in Austria. In 1954, Dr. Schaechter worked at YIVO as a bibliographer and proofreader. Today a Senior Lecturer in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University, he has been teaching Yiddish language in the intensive Uriel Weinreich Summer Program (a joint project of YIVO and Columbia University) since its inception in 1968. He has also taught Yiddish courses at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Jewish Teachers Seminary-Herzliah, and Yeshiva University. Throughout his career, he has instructed many distinguished scholars and professors of Yiddish language, literature and Jewish history in the United States, Canada, Israel, Germany, Great Britain, and other countries. 

Dr. Schaechter is editor of both the YIVO periodical Yidishe shprakh, a journal devoted to clarifying standard Yiddish, and the newsletter of the League for Yiddish, Afn shvel. He has also served as chief interviewer and associate editor of The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry as well as associate editor of The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language. He is additionally the author of numerous scholarly publications, including Yiddish II: An Intermediate and Advanced Textbook, which first appeared in 1986 and is currently in its third edition; and The Works of Elyokum Zunser: A Critical Edition, in two volumes, published by YIVO in 1964. Other publications include his Laytish mame-loshn (1986), Kurs fun yidisher ortografye (3rd ed., 1973), and Yidisher ortografisher vegvayzer (1961), co-authored with Max Weinreich. He has written several terminological English-Yiddish dictionaries, such as Mit a gutn apetit (1976), on food; Geviksn-velt, on plants (soon to be published by YIVO); and yet another on pregnancy and childbirth. 

Dr. Schaechter received the coveted Itsik Manger Prize, the most prestigious Yiddish literary award, in 1994; the Khayim Zhitlovsky Award in 1984; and the Schuchinsky Award from the World Congress for Jewish Culture in 1986. 
 

YIVO NEWS, No.183, Fall 1996


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