Schaechter z"l: toiling without sentimentality
"What motivated him was the desire that Yiddish should receive the respect of any other language."

Brian Zumhagen talked about him today on WNYC (audio, transcript).

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An evening of remembrance and Yiddish learning

on the shloyshim of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter z"l

Sunday, March 18th, 5:30 P.M.

at the Workmen’s Circle / Forward Building,

45 East 33rd Street

between Madison and Park Avenues

in New York City

The speakers:

David Braun, Harvard University

Marc Caplan, Johns Hopkins University

Paul Glasser, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Rakhmiel Peltz, Drexel University

David Roskies, Jewish Theological Seminary

A few Yiddish songs especially meaningful to Dr. Schaechter will be

sung.

Primarily in Yiddish.

Take the 6 train to East 33 Street,

or the D, F, N, R train to West 34 Street.

The Emperor of Yiddish Words
Schaechter z"l, from 72nd Street to Bainbridgevke.

Mordkhe Schaechter, a linguist, lexicographer and rebbe of secular Yiddishists, died February 15. He was 79.

I became attracted to Yiddish when I was growing up in Louisville, Ky. Sitting in the back of Ms. Donsky’s German class, I often encountered Schaechter’s name while stumbling through week-old issues of the Forverts. On the basis of these references, I came to imagine a one-man Yiddish empire, an Academy of the Yiddish Language, publishing books, issuing edicts and deciding issues of style from a Yiddish Palace perched high in the mountains of Eastern Europe.

Read more in the Forward.

Should not have been a talmid-khokhem

I am trying to express my appreciation of Schaechter (as everyone called him) in a limit-yourself-to-800-words sort of way. Meanwhile, a thought from today's shiva call, where someone quoted a frum acquaintance of the deceased. "It's a pity [Dr. Schaechter] wasn't a Torah scholar," the acquaintance supposedly said, "because he was so medakdek [punctilious]."

Two possible responses: no, he shouldn't have been a Torah scholar, because then he wouldn't have been what he was. Torah scholarship is not so destitute, nor the Jewish world of intellectual endeavor so narrow, that every talent must be yeshiva-fied. We have minds aplenty and lots of problems to work on, from the nature of God to the proper number of bird sacrifices - to questions of language preservation and standardization.

In fact, Schaechter was a secular Jew. Some friends and I (they are academic Yiddishists who devote their life to the language and literature) are discussing his passing over e-mail, and one pointed out that our subject line (borekh dayen emes, "Blessed be the True Judge"), while an appropriate and natural response for some of us, is not appropriate for Schaechter. He was many things in his appreciation of the Jewish people, but religious he was not. He was a secular Yiddishist, an ideology with its own powerful advantages, blindnesses, and failings, not to be lumped into our own personal categories, no matter how much we are beholden to them.

Second is that being medakdek (הקפדה, דקדקניות) is not what I think of as necessary for a Torah scholar. Encyclopedic knowledge, certainly; exactitude, yes; but above all an inspired creativity. But creativity is a dirty word in some circles.

Mordkhe Schaechter olevasholem

Dr. Schaechter, the linguist, teacher, editor, lexicographer, and (for lack of a better word) rebbe of Yiddishists everywhere, has died. The funeral will be tomorrow.

Update: The Times obituary.