Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 23.004
June 5, 2013

1) Mikhl Herzogs ptire
2) Links concerning Mikhl Herzog

1)----------------------------------------------------
The shamosim regretfully announce the death on June 28 of Mikhl (Marvin) Herzog 
(1927-2013), accomplished linguist and longtime professor of Yiddish at Columbia 
University, at the age of 85. He was buried on July 1 in his native city, Toronto, Canada.

Among his many achievements, Herzog devoted his life to completing the Language and 
Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ) after the deaths of his mentors Max and 
Uriel Weinreich and to furthering the field of Yiddish Studies. He was also, in the words 
of Mendele founder Noyekh Miller, "...the very first subscriber to Mendele and was for a 
number of years a very active contributor.  He helped set the tone for Mendele as a 
serious list."

In the words of Sam Norich, publisher of the English Forward and the Yiddish Forverts,

"Mikhl was the great strategist and impresario of Yiddish studies as an academic 
discipline in the last third of the 20th century. A student and colleague of Uriel and of 
Max Weinreich, he took on the most important research projects they left undone: the 
Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language and the Language and Culture Atlas of 
Ashkenazic Jewry. But it was as an academic organizer that he had his greatest success 
and impact. In a field that had no undergraduate majors in any American university, he 
created the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and 
Culture to identify and inspire young scholars to go into the field of Yiddish studies. He 
marshaled the resources of Columbia's linguistics department and of YIVO to create an 
area studies program leading to a Columbia PhD. The Linguistics Department at 
Columbia could have been a procrustean bed for most of his students who were more 
interested in literature and culture than they were in linguistics. YIVO was chronically 
short of funds and a kind of academic structure better understood in Europe than it was in 
post-war America. But it had the spirit, legacy and agenda of Max and Uriel Weinreich 
and scholars like Raphael Mahler, Isaiah Trunk, Shlomo Noble, Lucjan Dobroszycki, 
Bina Weinreich, Shoshke Erlich, Chane Mlotek (tsu lange yor,) librarians and archivists 
like Dina Abramowicz, Bella Weinberg, Zachary Baker, Pearl Berger, Marek Web, 
Fruma Mohrer and Roz Schwartz. Mikhl augmented that singular band of teachers with 
visiting scholars from Israel, Europe and America: Dan Miron, Benjamin Harshav, 
Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett, Avrom Nowersztern, Ruth Wisse, Robert Seltzer and 
others. The result: most of the senior professors in the field of Yiddish studies teaching in 
American and European universities today were students Mikhl brought to the field. Of 
all his achievements as legislator, diplomat, architect, author of the Declaration of 
Independence, third president of the US, Thomas Jefferson chose only one credit for his 
tombstone: founder of the University of Virginia. Mikhl can rightly have on his keyver 
the title of founder of the field of Yiddish studies as an academic discipline in the 
American university."

2)----------------------------------------------------
The shamosim have assembled the following links (please copy and paste the URL if necessary) to 
articles and websites relevant to the life and career of Mikhl Herzog. Koved zayn ondenk!

(1) Forverts obituary: http://yiddish.forward.com/articles/171106/yiddish-linguist-
marvin-herzog-has-died/  
(2) Forward obituary: http://forward.com/articles/179799/mikhl-herzog-columbia-
professor-and-yiddishist-die/
(3) The English and Yiddish introductions to the LCAAJ: 
https://sites.google.com/site/mendeledervaylik/library/LCAAJ.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1  
(4) LCAAJ website 1: http://www.eydes.de/  
(5) LCAAJ website 2: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/projects/digital/lcaaj/  
(6) https://www.facebook.com/MikhlHerzog


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End of Mendele Vol. 23.004

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