George Alexander Kohut was an American Jewish rabbi and scholar. He achieved material success and preserved the warm human touch.
Background
George Alexander Kohut was born on February 11, 1874 in Stuhlweissenberg, Hungary. He was the fourth child and first son of the eight children of Rabbi Alexander Kohut and Julia Weissbrunn. He was brought to the United States in 1885 as a boy of eleven, when the family settled in New York. From his early childhood he was of frail constitution. His mother died in her first year in America; subsequently his father married Rebekah Bettelheim, who proved a devoted mother to the children she made her own.
Education
Because of his frequent breakdowns in health George's education was irregular. His love of books and of Jewish learning was derived from his father, in whose library the lad, youth, and man was spiritually most at home. Another determining influence was Moritz Steinschneider, the bibliographer, under whom he studied in Berlin, 1895-97.
Career
After returning to America in May 1897, he expressed his versatile scholarly enthusiasms in various directions. He was rabbi in Dallas, Texas, 1897-1900, until he suffered a collapse of health. He later taught German, history, and Latin and conducted religious services in the girls' school founded by Rebekah Kohut, organized and directed a summer camp for boys, 1907-26, and a boys' boarding-school, 1908-18, became executive director of the historic Columbia Grammar School, New York, 1920-23, was assistant librarian of the Jewish Theological Seminary, 1902-05, principal of the Religious School of Temple Emanu-El, New York, 1902-13, editor of Helpful Thoughts, 1901-03, the Jewish Home, 1903-04, the New Era Illustrated Magazine, 1905, and Young Israel, 1907-08.
Bubbling over with superlative enthusiasms--one of his friends called him a Hungarian rhapsody--he made a notable success of his camps and schools. With the means which these yielded him, and with no personal needs except for his health and for purchasing bibliographical rarities, he became a benefactor of learning.
In memory of his father he established the Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation to Foster Jewish Learning, a publication fund (1915), and a research fellowship in Semitics (1919), all in Yale University, and in 1922-23 similar foundations in Vienna, Berlin, Budapest, and New York. The fruits of these are a small library of books of Jewish and Semitic learning. A man of limited means but of unbounded generosity, he fulfilled the functions of an academy. He gave to Yale University his father's and much of his own library, and a special Heine collection. Another part of his library he gave to the Jewish Institute of Religion, New York. He edited a number of memorial volumes; published A Hebrew Anthology (2 vols. , 1913), a collection of English poems and dramas inspired by Biblical writings and tradition; a volume of his own poems, Beside the Still Waters (1912); and numerous monographs on Jewish subjects, especially of historical, poetic, and bibliographical interest.
Views
Quotations:
"I have been many things in my life--amateur poet, historian, folklorist, librarian, bibliographer, camp director, school executive, bibliophile, book collector and humble patron of Jewish literature".
Personality
Kohut possessed a radiant and lovable personality of rare charm.