KABAKOFF, JACOB

KABAKOFF, JACOB (1918– ), U.S. educator and scholar. Born in New York, Kabakoff earned a diploma from the Teachers Institute of Yeshiva University in 1935 and a B.A. from the same institution in 1938. He was ordained a rabbi and awarded an M.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1944. He received a D.H.L. from the JTS in 1958. He served as a Conservative rabbi in Philadelphia (1944–48). From 1952 to 1968 he was dean of the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies, and then was appointed associate professor of Hebrew literature at Lehman College in New York City. A specialist in Hebrew literature in America, his Ḥalutzei ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit ba-Amerikah ("Pioneers of Hebrew Literature in America," 1966) dealt with such writers as Jacob Ẓevi Sobel, Henry Gersoni, Ze'ev Schurr, Gershon Rosenzweig, and Isaac Rabinowitz. His contributions to the Jewish Book Annual were listed in JBA, 25 (1967/68), 418. Kabakoff served as editor of the JBA from 1977 to 1996. He also served as chairman of the editorial board of the Hebrew weekly newspaper Hadoar and was a member of the Rabbinical Assembly, the American Association of Jewish Studies, the World Congress of Jewish Studies, and the American Association of Professors of Hebrew. In 1988 he was acknowledged by the Habermann Institute for Literary Research with its publication of a Hebrew Festschrift entitled Migvan: Studies in Honor of Jacob Kabakoff. He wrote Seekers and Stalwarts: Essays on American Hebrew Literature and Culture (1978) and edited Master of Hope: Selected Writings of Naphtali Herz Imber (1985). (Eisig Silberschlag Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)