Alexander Harkavy

Alexander Harkavy ( Yiddish: אַלכּסנדר האַרקאַווי or אַלעקסאַנדר האַרקאַווי, Belarusian: Аляксандр Гаркавы or Аляксандар Гаркаві, Russian: Александр Гаркави ), born May 5, 1863 in Nawahradak ( Yiddish: נאַוואַרעדאָק, Belarusian: Наваградак or Навагрудак, in present-day Belarus); † November 2, 1939 in New York, was a Yiddish writer, lexicographer and linguist who has rendered outstanding especially after his emigration to the United States to support the research and care of Yiddish at YIVO.

After the anti-Semitic pogroms of 1880, Harkavy joined the Jewish Am Olam ( Eternal People ) - to movement whose objective was the formation of agricultural communes. Instead of orientating to Palestine, as the Bilu ( Beir Ya'ako leku Ve - neklja, or "Let the house of Jacob, go " ) - group Am Olam group was oriented to North America. Therefore Harkavy emigrated in 1882 to the United States, but found no connection to a successful Am Olam community. Instead, he went on his wandering years, after Paris in 1886 to New York, 1887 to Montreal in 1889 to Baltimore in 1890 and 1885 brought him back to New York. During those years he studied and taught and published his first journalistic and scientific work.

In Montreal, he managed a group of friends of Hebrew and of the movement Hovevei Tsion ( Lovers of Zion ) to gather. Together they founded a local group whose line Harvaky took over. He succeeded also a new magazine, the first Yiddish in Canada to issue: the time. He also wrote the first history of the Jews in Canada. He took back in the United States in the activities of the anarchist group Pionire the Frayhayt ( Pioneers of Liberty ). In Baltimore in 1890, he gave the magazine Der Idisher Progres ( Jewish Progress) out.

Between 1897-98 he edited the organization is not bound radical magazine Der Nayer Gayst ( The New Spirit ), the first aesthetic Journal of the American Left.