Isidor Levin and Tajik Folklore Studies: A Brief Biographical Sketch of a Forgotten Folklorist

Isidor Haimovich Levin (1919Levin ( -2018) ) was an important scholar of structuralist methods in folklore studies, who guided the classification and systematization of folklore texts in the former Soviet Union.Regrettably, his work is unknown to many folklorists in the present.This research note considers his biography and contributions to Soviet folklore studies.Levin was born into a Jewish family on 20 September 1919 in the city of Daugavpils (Dvinsk), Latvia and died on 24 July 2018 in Hamburg, Germany.At the age of six, his parents sent him to Hebrew school.He later entered a four-year Jewish gymnasium, receiving his diploma in 1937.His teachers were graduates of the University of Jerusalem.In the same year, Levin entered the University of Tartu in Estonia to study Judaism.The Department of Jewish Studies in Tartu had been organized at the suggestion of the world-famous physicist Albert Einstein to save Jewish science in Europe, which had been destroyed by the Nazi party in Germany.Levin ended up studying