Shiye Mordkhe Lifshits

Shiye Mordkhe Lifshits, who spent most of his life in Berdichev, was a pioneering linguist and lexicographer, and an exponent of modern Yiddish culture and the idea of political Yiddishism. In contrast to other maskilim who denigrated Yiddish as a backward, mongrel tongue, Lifshits believed that the language could be utilized to spread Enlightenment values to a mass audience. In this regard, he helped Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh, the great fiction writer, to switch to Yiddish as his main form of literary expression. Lifshits was also likely instrumental in pushing Alexander Zederbaum to publish Kol mevaser, Russia’s first Yiddish periodical. Lifshits’s lexicographical work, particularly on his native Volhynian dialect, and in his multilingual dictionaries, was groundbreaking.