[Mendele] Mendele Vol.23.004

[Victor Bers]

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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