Alexander Harkavy (, , ''Aleksandr Garkavi''; May 5, 1863 at Novogrudok (),

Minsk Governorate Minsk Governorate was an administrative-territorial unit (''guberniya'') of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Minsk. It was created from the land acquired in the partitions of Poland and existed from 1793 until 1921. Its territory covered th ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

(now Navahrudak, Hrodna Voblast,

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) - 1939 in

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) was a Russian-born American

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...

lexicographer Lexicography is the study of lexicons and the art of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into two separate academic disciplines: * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionary, dictionaries. * The ...

and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

Biography

Alexander Harkavy was educated privately, and at an early age evinced a predilection for

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

. In 1879 he went to

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, where he worked in the printing-office of the Romm Brothers. After the 1881–1882

pogroms in the Russian Empire Pogroms in the Russian Empire () were large-scale, targeted, and repeated Antisemitism, anti-Jewish riots that began in the 19th century. Pogroms began to occur after Russian Empire, Imperial Russia, which previously had very few Jews, acquired te ...

, Harkavy joined the Jewish

Am Olam Am Olam was a movement among Russian Jews to establish agricultural colonies in America. The name means "Eternal People" and is taken from the title of an essay by Peretz Smolenskin. It was founded in Odessa in 1881 by Mania Bakl (Maria Bahal) and ...

back-to-the-land movement A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarianism, agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree o ...

. Unlike

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, which directed its activities towards

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, Am Olam saw a Jewish future in the United States. In 1882, Harkavy emigrated to the United States but did not succeed in joining or establishing an agricultural entity, finding himself in search of a living. Harkavy was in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

in 1885, New York in 1886,

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

in 1887,

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1889 Events January * January 1 ** The total solar eclipse of January 1, 1889 is seen over parts of California and Nevada. ** Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka experiences a vision, leading to the start of the Ghost Dance movement in the Dakotas ...

and back in New York in 1890. During these years of wandering Harkavy studied, taught, and published his first journalistic and scholarly compositions. In

, he achieved some acclaim among local Hebraists and founded a branch of the

Lovers of Zion The Lovers of Zion, also ''Hovevei Zion'' () or ''Hibbat Zion'' (, ), were a variety of proto-Zionist organizations founded in 1881 in response to the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and were officially constituted as a group at a conf ...

, of which he served as president. Harkavy published in lithograph form one issue of a

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

newspaper, ''Die Tzeit'' (The Time), the first Jewish newspaper in Canada. He also wrote the first

history of the Jews in Canada The history of the Jews in Canada goes back to the 1700s. Canadian Jews, whether by culture, ethnicity, or religion, form the fourth largest Jewish community in the world, exceeded only by those in Israel, the United States and France. In th ...

. Back in the United States he participated in the activities of the anarchist group Pioneers of Liberty. In Baltimore he published ''Der Idisher Progres'' (Jewish Progress) in 1890. He was one of the contributors to the

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...

. Harkavy also worked on translating Scripture into English, starting with Genesis (published 1915), then

Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of B ...

(1915), then ''The Twenty-Four Books of the Holy Scriptures According to the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

'' (1916), with reprintings following.

Work on Yiddish

It is partly due to Harkavy's work that

today is regarded as a language. His Yiddish

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

show that its vocabulary is as ample as that of the average modern language, and that, if lacking in technical terms, it is richer in idiomatic and characteristic expressions.The Jewish Encyclopedia
/ref>

Works

Among Alexander Harkavy's most important works are: * Alexander Harkavy, The Jews in Canada, Montreal 1887; reprinted in: Canadian Jewish Historical Society - Journal Vol. 7 no 2, S. 59-6

* "Complete English-Jewish Dictionary" (1891); * "Dictionary of the Yiddish Language: Yiddish-English" (1898); * pocket editions of English-Jewish and Jewish-English dictionaries; * "Amerikanischer Briefsteller" (English and Judæo-German, 1899); * "Ollendorf's Method of English: in Yiddish" (1893); * ''"Uchebnik Angliskavo Yazyka"'' (1892); * ''"Torat Leshon Anglit"'', an English grammar in Hebrew (1894); * ''"Ha-Yesh Mishpaṭ Lashon li-Sefat Yehudit?"'' (1896), in which he shows that Yiddish has the essential elements and forms of a living language; * ''"Don Kichot"'', a Judæo-German translation (1897–98);
Yiddish-English (6th edition), English-Yiddish (11th edition) Dictionary (1910)
* ''The Holy Scriptures'' (1916) reprinted 1936 & 1951; * ''Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary'' (4th ed 1928) republished 1968. * "Students' Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary to the Old Testament" (1914)

Bibliography of Jewish Encyclopedia

* E. Harkavy, ''Dor Yesharim'', New York, 1992 * Benzion Eisenstadt, ''Ḥakme Yisrael be-Ameriḳa'', New York, 1903, p. 33 * ''Ha-Leom'' (Harkavy's

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life, providing a personal narrative that reflects on the author's experiences, memories, and insights. This genre allows individuals to share thei ...

), vol. ii., New York, 1903 * Kenyon Zimmer,
'The Whole World is Our Country': Immigration and Anarchism in the United States, 1885-1940
(dissertation), University of Pittsburgh 2010, p. 78-81. *Jonathan D. Sarna, "Our Distant Brethren" - Alexander Harkavy On Montreal Jews - 1888 (engl.), in: Canadian Jewish Historical Society - Journal Vol. 7 no 2, S. 59-6

References

External links