Biography[edit]
Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai was born Harry Torczyner in Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (later Lwów, Poland, now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1886. He moved to Vienna, Austria, and then to Berlin, Germany in 1919 to be a lecturer at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for Jewish Studies) in Berlin. He was in Palestine from 1910–1912 and participated in founding Gymnasia Rehavia in Jerusalem and Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He settled in Palestine in 1933. He was professor of Semitic languages at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
He and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda are considered Israel’s two foremost philologists. Tur-Sinai's nephew, Jacques Torczyner, is a former president of the Zionist Organization of America.
Published works[edit]
Of his many books, those translated into English include The Revival of the Hebrew Language and The Book of Job: A New Commentary. He published a translation of the Tanakh from Hebrew into German. Of the Hebrew dictionary project begun by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (Dictionary of the Ancient and Modern Hebrew Language, Ben-Yehuda Dictionary), volumes 10-16 as well as the prolegomenon volume (המבוא הגדול) "were edited, updated, and completed" by Tur-Sinai, with the assistance of Dov Jarden, Meir Medan, and others.[6] The sixteenth and final volume was released in 1958, 50 years after Ben Yehuda's first volume was published.[6]