By Saul Lieberman and Tovia Preschel
Isaac Rivkind came to the field of Jewish scholarship after years of intensive activity in the Zionist movement in Europe and the United States.
Born in Lodz into a family of means and of considerable learning, he studied at the Yeshivot of Volozhin and Ponovez. During World War I he helped organize the Mizrachi Organization in Poland and to found the Zeire Mizrachi Movement there. He soon earned a considerable reputation as a contributor to the Hebrew and Yiddish press on questions relating to Zionism and contemporary Jewish life generally.
In the period immediately following World War I, he served as a member of the provisional Jewish National Council in Poland and in 1920 went to London as a delegate to the Zionist Conference.
From London he proceeded to the United States to work on behalf of the Mizrachi Organization. He found American-Jewish communal life much different from that of Eastern Europe and missed especially the lofty idealism and deep spirituality of the Polish-Jewish masses. Accordingly he decided to withdraw from active involvement in organizational work, and in 1923 joined the staff of the Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
The Seminary library had just come into possession of the renowned collection of the Anglo-Jewish collector, Elkan Nathan Adler. Working as a cataloguer and bibliographer in this collection of great literary treasures of the Jews, Rivkind threw himself into research on the literary and cultural heritage of the Jews. While nothing of Jewish interest was alien to his spirit, he displayed a special fondness for the history of Hebrew and Yiddish typography, the history of the Yiddish language and Jewish folklore.
In the course of his long scholarly and literary career, he composed a vast number of studies and essays in many areas of Jewish scholarship which established him as an outstanding authority in the field of his interest.
Rivkind was the author of three books: Le-ot u-le-Zikkaron (in Hebrew, New York, 1942), on the history and customs of the Bar Mitzva celebration; Der Kamf kegn Azartshpilen bei Yidn (In Yiddish, new York, 1946), on the struggle against gambling among Jews, with special reference to old Yiddish poetry; and Yiddishe Gelt (New York, 1959) a voluminous Yiddish Lexicological study on money in Jewish linguistic usage, cultural history and folklore. A detailed bibliography of his writings is found in Minha Le’Yitzhak (edited by M. Kosover and A. G. Duker, New York, 1949) and in Hadoar (vol. 45 no. 21, 1965).
Rivkind contributed to many publications. The wide range of his scholarly interests was reflected in such diverse studies as a paper on the religion of Bialik, “Elokei Bialik” En Hakore (Berlin, 1923); a series of studies entitled “Dikduke Sefarim” in which he drew attention to textual and typographical variations within some editions of early Hebrew printed books (Kirjath Sepher, 1925, 1928 and 1934); a paper on Ladino literature, “Sifrut Ladino” (Ibid., 1937) Two of his folkloristic studies that gained considerable acclaim were his paper on “A Responsum from Moses Provencal on Ball Games” (Tarbiz, 1933); “A responsum by Leon Da Modena discussing the Permissibility of Uncovering one’s Head” (Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, Hebrew part, New York, 1946). He also published a variety of documents relating to the history of the Jews of Palestine and a series of papers on Yiddish philology, entitled “Verter mit Hihus” (Yiddishe Shprakh, 1953-55, 1965).
Rivkind wrote in a classic Hebrew and Yiddish style. He was particularly fond of those subjects that illustrated the diversity of Jewish cultural life in Europe and the moral nobility of the Jewish tradition. Indeed, he conceived of his scholarly work as an aspect of his service to the Jewish people.
He was a co-founder of the American YIVO and was on the executive of the Hebrew P.E.N. Club of the United States. From 1940 to 1948 he served as national chairman of the League for Religious Labor in Palestine.
In 1959 he retired from the Seminary Library, hoping to devote all of his time to sizeable literary projects, for which he had assembled material over many years. Though he was prevented from realizing his aims by a severe illness, he continued to the last to be of help to friends and scholars who constantly sought his advice and aid.
The death in 1967 of his beloved wife Yehudit was a severe blow which severely impaired his remaining energies. His own death followed a year later. His remains were flown to Israel and buried in Tel-Aviv.
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research (1969). American Academy for Jewish Research, vol. 37, xxxii-xxxiv.