Alexander M. Dushkin

Alexander M. Dushkin was born in 1890 in Suwałki

Alexander Mordecai Dushkin was born in Suwałki, then part of the Russian Empire, to Ze'ev and Miriam Dushkin. He moved to the United States with his family at age 11. His younger brother Samuel Dushkin was a violinist.

He earned a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1911 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1913. He finished the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1914. In 1918 he received a doctorate from Columbia for a study of Jewish education in New York City.

He edited The Jewish Teacher from 1916 to 1919, the first English language Jewish education journal in the United States. From 1923 to 1934 he headed the Board of Jewish Education in Chicago and created its College of Jewish Studies. In 1935 he founded the Department of Education at the Hebrew University and, with Eliezer Rieger and Ben-Zion Dinur, the Hebrew University Secondary School, where he was the first principal.

In 1939 he returned to the United States as executive director of the New York Committee for Jewish Education. He came back to Israel and the Hebrew University in 1949 and advised Youth Aliyah on vocational training. He retired in 1958, received the Israel Prize in 1968 and the Yakir Yerushalayim title in 1973, and died in Jerusalem in 1976.