NOSN ZISKIND

NOSN ZISKIND (b. September 10, 1906)

            He was born in Stropkov, Slovakia.  He received a fervently religious education.  After WWI he moved to the United States with his parents, studied in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yitskhok Elchonon, later in City College of New York and Columbia University; he also studied in Marburg and Berlin (Germany), in Vienna (Austria), and graduated with a Ph.D. in 1942.  From 1948 he was associate professor of Germanic and Slavic languages at City College.  He was connected with YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) from 1934.  He published work in Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) (New York) 6 (1934), pp. 157-65; 10 (1936), pp. 151-58; and in the journal Yidishe shprakh (Yiddish language) (New York) 13 (October-December 1953), pp. 97-108: “Batrakhtungen vegn der geshikhte fun yidish” (Reports on the history of Yiddish).  At the conference on Yiddish research in New York in April 1958, he read a paper entitled: “Yidish religyeze terminen fun nit-loshn-koydeshn opshtam” (Yiddish religious terms of non-Hebrew-Aramaic derivation).  He was last living in New York.

Sources: Yivo-biblyografye 1925-1941 (YIVO bibliography, 1925-1941) (New York: YIVO, 1943), nos. 1345, 1527; Konferents far yidish-forshung (Conference for Yiddish research), report of the organizing committee (New York, 1958); Shmuel Niger, in Tog morgn-zhurnal (New York) (October 23, 1958); Directory of American Scholars, 2^nd edition (Lancaster, Penn., 1951).

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