TOUROFF, NISSAN

TOUROFF, NISSAN (1877–1953), educator and author. Born in Nesvizh near Minsk, Touroff became principal of the Girls School in Jaffa in 1907 and later principal of the Levinsky Teachers Seminary for Girls. During World War i he headed the important Education Committee (Va'ad ha-Ḥinnukh) which was responsible for Jewish education in Palestine. He also edited, briefly, the pedagogical journal Ha-Ḥinnukh and the daily Haaretz. He immigrated to the United States in 1919 and worked in an editorial capacity for the Stybel Publishing Company. He was one of the founders of the Hebrew Teachers College (now Hebrew College) of Boston in 1921 and its first dean. He also founded the educational magazine Shevilei ha-Ḥinnukh in 1925. In 1926 he left Boston and became professor of education and Hebrew literature at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York (1926–32). Touroff 's major themes in education were nationalism and Zionism, Hebrew language and literature, the utilization of modern psychological insights in teaching, and the attention to aesthetics in the life of the school. His main Hebrew works in the fields of education and psychology include Ha-Psychologyah be-Yameinu (2 vols., 1939–41), Be-Yode'im u-ve-Lo Yode'im (1946), a collection of essays on problems of culture and education under the title Ha'arakhot (1947), and Be'ayot ha-Hitabbedut (1953).

bibliography:

E. Silberschlag and Y. Twersky (eds.), Sefer Touroff (1938), 7–114 (incl. bibl.); M. Ribalow, Ketavim u-Megillot (1942), 246–61; A. Epstein, Soferim Ivriyyim ba-Amerikah (1952), 403–12; Z. Scharfstein, Gedolei Ḥinnukh be-Ammenu (1964), 208–25.

[Eisig Silberschlag]