Alexander Harkavy

American author, linguist, and lexicographer

Alexander Harkavy (, Александр Гаркави, Aleksandr Garkavi; May 5, 1863 at Novogrudok , Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire (now Navahrudak, Hrodna Voblast, Belarus) 1939 in New York City) was a Russian born American writer, lexicographer and linguist.

Alexander Harkavy was educated privately, and at an early age evinced a predilection for philology. In 1879 he went to Vilna, where he worked in the printing office of the Romm Brothers. After the 1881–1882 pogroms in the Russian Empire, Harkavy joined the Jewish Am Olam back to the land movement. Unlike Bilu, which directed its activities towards Palestine, 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 in 1885, New York in 1886, Montreal in 1887, Baltimore in 1889 and back in New York in 1890. During these years of wandering Harkavy studied, taught, and published his first journalistic and scholarly compositions. In Montreal, he achieved some acclaim among local Hebraists and founded a branch of the Lovers of Zion, of which he served as president. Harkavy published in lithograph form one issue of a Yiddish newspaper, Die Tzeit (The Time), the first Jewish newspaper in Canada. He also wrote the first history of the Jews in Canada. 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. Harkavy also worked on translating Scripture into English, starting with Genesis (published 1915), then Psalms (1915), then The Twenty Four Books of the Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (1916), with reprintings following.

It is partly due to Harkavy's work that Yiddish today is regarded as a language. His Yiddish dictionaries 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.

E. Harkavy, Dor Yesharim, New York, 1992
Benzion Eisenstadt, Ḥakme Yisrael be Ameriḳa, New York, 1903, p. 33
Ha Leom (Harkavy's autobiography), 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 61