Morris Jastrow, Jr.

Morris Jastrow, Jr., Ph. D. (August 13, 1861 – June 22, 1921) was an American orientalist, the son of Marcus Jastrow.

Biography

He was born in Warsaw, came to Philadelphia in 1866 when his father, Marcus Jastrow, accepted a position as Rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Shalom. He graduated at Penn in 1881. He traveled to Europe and studied at Leipzig and Paris after which, in 1885, he returned to the United States and became a professor of Semitic languages and a librarian at Penn.

He contributed articles, and was one of the editors of the Jewish Publication Society's Jewish Encyclopedia. (1901-1906), as well as a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica (1903). He was president of the American Oriental Society 1914-15, and president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1916. He died in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania.

Works

He edited the Aramaic text of the grammatical treatises of Abu Zakariyya Hayyug (1897); Selected Essays of James Darmesteter (with a memoir; translation of the essays by Mrs. Morris Jastrow, Jr., 1895); and a series of Handbooks on the History of Religion.

References