Ri J. Turner is a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She holds a M.A. in Yiddish from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and has received grants for Yiddish translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, the Yiddish Book Center, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Her translations and original writing have appeared, in English and Yiddish, in The Forward, Afn Shvel, Pakn Treger, Sprachbund, and several print anthologies.
CONTRIBUTOR
Ri J. Turner
RELATED ARTICLES
Blog
Briv funem arkhiv: Wulf Winokur, Hebrew Seminarian and Yiddish Humorist in Vilna
Ri J. Turner and Ania Szyba
Winokur’s letters offer a colorful snapshot of student life in Vilna between the world wars.
May 02, 2023
Pedagogy
The Comet at the End of the World: An Online, Immersive, Conversational Lesson Plan about “Current Events” Using Digitized Yiddish Press Materials
Ri J. Turner
Ri Turner shares the materials from a session for intermediate students over Zoon on astronomy reportage in the Yiddish press, which can serve as an example of how to identify digitized historical Yiddish materials around a particular theme, repackage them in a format that is accessible to intermediate students, and use them in an online teaching context to generate a conversation that is both historically rooted and contemporarily relevant.
Jun 06, 2022
Blog
“Black Lives Matter” and Talking about Blackness in Yiddish: Stakes, Considerations, and Open Questions
Jonah S. Boyarin, Ri J. Turner and Arun Viswanath
A conversation about the effort to create and disseminate a list of vocabulary for speaking and writing in Yiddish about the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder at the hands of police.
Oct 27, 2020
Review
A Double Dose of Early Twentieth-Century Yiddish Talush-hood: Two New Translations by Daniel Kennedy
Ri J. Turner
In new translations by Daniel Kennedy, Hersh Dovid Nomberg’s Warsaw Stories (White Goat Press) and Zalman Shneour’s A Death: Notes of a Suicide (Wakefield Press) can rightfully be labeled “classic”; they reach across time and space to name an eternal — and unromantic — facet of human experience.
Apr 29, 2020
Review
What Does Justice Mean, Decades Later?: Review of Ida Fink’s Der tish in Paris
Ri J. Turner
Ri Turner reviews the World Premiere of Ida Fink’s Der tish in Paris.
May 09, 2019
Texts & Translation
ייִדישיסטן
Yiddishists
Der Tunkeler
Translation by Ri J. Turner
A humoristic monologue from Der Tunkeler about Yiddishism.
Mar 20, 2019
Texts & Translation
חיים גראַװיצער (די געשיכטע פֿון דעם געפֿאַלענעם): פֿון דער חבדישער װעלט
Chaim Gravitzer (The Tale of the Downfallen One): From the World of Chabad
Fishl Schneersohn
Translation by Ri J. Turner
An extract from Fishl Schneersohn’s novel Chaim Gravitzer: The Tale of the Downfallen One From the World of Chabad.
Jul 03, 2018
Texts & Translation
ביאָגראַפֿיע פֿון "אחד הרבנים המרגישים"
Biography of “One of the Sensitive Rabbis” (Part 3)
Aaron Shmuel Tamares
Translation by Ri J. Turner
The third part of an autobiographical essay of Rabbi Aaron Shmuel Tamares, AKA “One of the Sensitive Rabbis”
May 10, 2017
Texts & Translation
ביאָגראַפֿיע פֿון "אחד הרבנים המרגישים"
Biography of “One of the Sensitive Rabbis” (Part 2)
Aaron Shmuel Tamares
Translation by Ri J. Turner
The second part of an autobiographical essay of Rabbi Aaron Shmuel Tamares, AKA “One of the Sensitive Rabbis”
May 01, 2017
Texts & Translation
ביאָגראַפֿיע פֿון "אחד הרבנים המרגישים"
Biography of “One of the Sensitive Rabbis” (Part 1)
Aaron Shmuel Tamares
Translation by Ri J. Turner
An autobiographical essay of Rabbi Aaron Shmuel Tamares, AKA “One of the Sensitive Rabbis”
Apr 24, 2017
Texts & Translation
צו אַלע די, וואָס ווילן בויען „יבֿנה“
To All Those Who Want to Build Yavneh (Part 2)
Hillel Zeitlin
Translation by Arthur Green, Ariel Evan Mayse and Ri J. Turner
The following essay details the proposed concrete steps for the formation of Yavneh, a movement for the spiritual regeneration of Judaism and world Jewry, published in Der moment in 1923.
Mar 08, 2016
Texts & Translation
“צו אַלע די, וואָס ווילן בויען „יבֿנה
To All Those Who Want to Build Yavneh (Part 1)
Hillel Zeitlin
Translation by Arthur Green, Ariel Evan Mayse and Ri J. Turner
The following essay details the proposed concrete steps for the formation of Yavneh, a movement for the spiritual regeneration of Judaism and world Jewry, published in Der moment in 1923.
Mar 08, 2016
Texts & Translation
גרויסער רוף פֿון דער שעה
The Great Call of the Hour (Part 3)
Hillel Zeitlin
Translation by Arthur Green, Ariel Evan Mayse and Ri J. Turner
The following essay by Zeitlin is part three of his original call for the formation of an elite Jewish spiritual fraternity, published in Der moment in 1923.
Mar 08, 2016