Mordkhe Schaechter (1927–2007)

Mordkhe Schaechter was born to a multi-lingual Jewish family in Czernowitz (Cernăuţi), Romania, present-day Chernivtsi, Ukraine. His parents were Lifshe and Binyumen Schaechter, and his older sister was the Yiddish poet and writer Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman. He survived World War II in the Czernowitz Ghetto along with his mother, sister, and brother-in-law. He studied linguistics at the University of Bucharest and earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Vienna in 1951, with a dissertation about Yiddish. From 1947 to 1951, he lived in the Arzbergerstrasse displaced persons camp in Vienna. During this period, he worked for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, as a zamler, or collector, for the YIVO Archives. In 1951, he emigrated to the USA, and served in military intelligence in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. After his discharge, he resumed his association with YIVO and began teaching and writing. He worked as a bibliographer, proofreader, and finally as editor of YIVO's Yiddishe Shprakh, a journal devoted to Standard Yiddish. From 1981 until his retirement in 1993, he was senior lecturer in Yiddish Studies at Columbia University in New York. He also taught Yiddish courses at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Jewish Teacher's Seminary-Herzliah, and Yeshiva University. Dr. Schaechter was the teacher and mentor of many distinguished scholars and professors of Yiddish language, literature, and Jewish history throughout the world. In addition, he founded several organizations devoted to promoting and standardizing the use of Yiddish. In the 1980s, he was associate editor of The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language. He wrote and published a wide variety of books, including Authentic Yiddish; Pregnancy, Childbirth and Early Childhood: An English-Yiddish Dictionary; and Plant Names in Yiddish: A Handbook of Botanical Terminology. Dr. Schaechter was honored for his work with the Itzik Manger Prize, the most prestigious Yiddish literary award, in 1994. He also received the Khayim Zhitlowsky Award in 1984, and the Osher Schuchinsky Award from the World Congress for Jewish Culture in 1986. He was married to Charne Schaechter, with whom he had four children. Two of his daughters also became Yiddish writers.