Alec (Leyzer) Burko

Leyzer Burko is a Yiddish scholar and lexicographer. He has taught at UC Berkeley and Indiana University Bloomington, as well as the Workers Circle. He is working on a Yiddish Dialect Dictionary, a work that compares the historical dialects of Eastern Europe with the new dialects spoken in Haredi communities today. The project grew out of the research for his dissertation, Saving Yiddish: Yiddish Studies and the Language Sciences in America, 1940–1970 (Jewish Theological Seminary, 2019). He also edited Mame-loshn, a volume of writings by the Yiddish lexicographer and radio personality Nahum Stutchkoff.