Alexander Kohut, the Arukh HaShalem אלכסנדר קוהוט
A rabbi and philologist who reissued the Arukh with the additions of eight centuries
He was born at Irsa in Hungary, served as rabbi in Tarnowitz, Szekesfehervar and Pecs, and from 1880 to 1884 in Oradea, where he led the Neolog community; in 1885 he left for New York and the congregation Ahavath Chesed.
The chief work of his life was another man's lexicon. The Arukh of Rabbi Nathan of Rome, compiled at the beginning of the twelfth century, had by the nineteenth gathered eight centuries of corrections and findings: the Greek, Latin and Persian words of the Talmud had meanwhile been worked over by philologists, and the manuscripts of the Arukh itself had scattered among the libraries of Europe. Kohut brought all of it into one work, keeping the text of Rabbi Nathan as its foundation. Eight volumes, more than four thousand double column pages, appeared between 1878 and 1892 in Vienna and New York.
In America he found himself in the middle of the argument over what Judaism there was to be, and stood for faithfulness to the law. Together with Rabbi Sabato Morais he was among the founders of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and lectured there on the making of the Talmud to the end of his days.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Arukh HaShalem, eight volumes, Vienna and New York, 1878 to 1892 — the size of the work and that the text of Rabbi Nathan of Rome is kept as its foundation
Scholarship
- Kohut, Alexander, article in the Jewish Encyclopedia — the years of his life, his posts in Hungary and in Oradea, his move to New York and his part in founding the seminary
Basis: documents and evidence.