Jastrow, Marcus

Jastrow, Marcus (Mordechai)

(1829–1903) rabbi, scholar; born in Posen, Poland. Educated in Germany, he was active in the Polish revolutionary cause, for which he was imprisoned and then exiled by the Russians. He came to the U.S.A. in 1866 as rabbi of the Rodeph Shalom congregation in Philadelphia. In support of Conservative Judaism, he helped found (1867) and then taught at Maimonides College. A productive scholar, his greatest accomplishment was his enormous dictionary of Jewish literature (1886–1903).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.