Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter
Chernovitz 1927 - New York 2007
Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, the third editor of Afn Shvel (1957-2004), was a noted Yiddish linguist, writer and educator. Born in Czernowitz (then Romania) in 1927, he completed his doctorate in Linguistics at the University of Vienna in 1951. From 1981 until his retirement in 1993, he was Senior Lecturer in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University in New York until the late 1980s. He taught Yiddish language in the intensive Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature & Culture, a joint project of YIVO and Columbia University, since its inception in 1968 until 2002. He has also taught Yiddish courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1960-1962), Jewish Teachers Seminary/Herzliah (1962-1978) and Yeshiva University (1968-1973) and has instructed many distinguished scholars and professors of Yiddish language, literature and Jewish history throughout the world. In fact, it would be safe to say that almost any Yiddish teacher or scholar of note in North America in the last forty years, and many from other continents as well, have studied under Mordkhe Schaechter.
Dr. Schaechter came to America in 1951 but worked for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research since 1947, first as a zamler (collector) for the YIVO Archives in the post-war D.P. camps in Austria, and, once in New York, as a bibliographer and proofreader (1954-1956), and finally as the editor of the YIVO periodical Yidishe Shprakh, a journal devoted to questions of Standard Yiddish (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, etc.) from 1971 to 1986.
He served as chief interviewer and associate editor of The Language and Culture Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (Columbia University) from 1961 to 1970, as well as associate editor of The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language in the 1980s.
Dr. Schaechter received the Itsik Manger Prize, the most prestigious Yiddish literary award, in 1994; the Khayim Zhitlowsky Award in 1984; and the Osher Schuchinsky Award from the World Congress for Jewish Culture in 1986.
His achievements in the cultural sphere are no less impressive than those in the literary or academic sphere. He was the founder of the League for Yiddish and served as its executive director from the inception of the organization in 1979 until his retirement in 2004. In 1964 he founded Yugntruf – Youth for Yiddish together with several of his students, and he served as its official advisor until 1974.
