KHAVE TURNYANSKI (CHAVA TURNIANSKY)

KHAVE TURNYANSKI (CHAVA TURNIANSKY) (b. July 21, 1937)

            She was born in Mexico City.  She studied at public school and middle school, and in 1955 at the School for Teachers in the Diaspora in Jerusalem.  In 1957 she made aliya to Israel.  Over the years 1958-1974, she studied Yiddish, Yiddish literature, and Jewish history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where in 1974 she received her doctor of philosophy degree.  From that point she was a lecturer in the Yiddish department at Hebrew University.  She edited Fun undzer yidisher literatur, leyenbukh farn limed fun yidish (From our Yiddish literature, textbook for the subject of Yiddish) (Tel Aviv: Veltrat far Yiddish, 1980), 150 pp., second edition (1983).  She has written a series of studies of Yiddish and Yiddish literatur, mostly in Hebrew, including: “Di gilgulim fun peretses monish” (The metamorphoses of Perets’s Monish), Di goldene keyt (The golden chain) (Tel Aviv) 52 (1965), pp. 205-24; translation and adaptation of Tsenerene, in Sefer dov sadan (Dov Sadan volume) (Jerusalem, 1976/1977), pp. 165-90; “Hayetsira hadu-leshonit beashkenaz” (Bilingual creation in Ashkenaz), in Divre hakongres haolami hashishi lemadae hayahadut (Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies) 4 (1980); “Ha-‘bentsherl vehazemirot beyidish” (After-meal prayer book and hymns in Yiddish), Ale sefer (Book pages) 10 (1982), pp. 51-92; “Shtei shirot epiot beyidish al sefer yehoshua” (Two epic poems in the Book of Joshua), Tarbits (Garden) 51 (1982), pp. 589-632; “Sutskever un altyidish” (Sutzkever and Old Yiddish), Yikhes fun lid, lekoved avrom sutskever (The pedigree of a poem, in honor of Abraham Sutzkever) (Tel Aviv, 1983), pp. 62-88; “Tseror igerot beyidish miyerushalayim mishenot hashishim shel hamea ha-16” (Bundle of letters in Yiddish from Jerusalem from the 1560s), Shalem (Unhewn) 4 (1984), pp. 149-209; and many more.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 279-80.

Translator’s note. Much more may be found about her work at: http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/turniansky-chava (JAF)