Alexander Harkavy, prominent Yiddish philologist, translator, editor and lexicographer, will be honored on the occasion of his 70th birthday on May 6th at a banquet in Beethoven Hall, 210 East 5th Street.
Arrangements are being made by the Alexander Harkavy Jubilee Committee, consisting of his numerous admirers and friends.
Harkavy was born in Navaredok, Russia. He came to America in May 1882 and three years later emigrated to Paris, where he published his first philological work in Hebrew giving an historical review of the Yiddish language. Later he went back to America and in 1887 he was invited to Montreal as a teacher in the Hebrew Free School. In 1890 he published a Yiddish weekly “Yiddish Progress,” in Baltimore. Settling in New York, he published innumerable text books for the study of English and Yiddish.
Harkavy may truly be referred to as the man who taught the immigrant the English language. His pocket dictionaries were very popular among immigrants. His life work, the Yiddish-Hebrew-English Dictionary, appeared several years ago.
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