Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai

Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai (Hebrew: נפתלי הרץ טור-סיני‎; born 13 November 1886 – 17 October 1973) was a Bible scholar, author, and linguist instrumental in the revival of the Hebrew language as a modern, spoken language. Tur-Sinai was the first president of the Academy of the Hebrew Language and founder of its Historical Dictionary Project.

Biography

Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai (Harry Torczyner) was born 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 High School 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.

Awards

• In 1940, Tur-Sinai was awarded the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought.
• In 1956, he was awarded the Israel Prize, for Jewish studies.
• In 1967, he received the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award, the year of the award's inauguration.

Published works

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 Old Testament from Hebrew into German. In 1959, Tur-Sinai finished the 50-year 17-volume Hebrew dictionary project begun by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.[1]

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• List of Bialik Prize recipients