- Gurion Hyman
Infobox Person
name = Gurion Joseph Hyman
caption = Gurion Joseph Hyman, circa 2008
birth_date =January 9 ,1925
birth_place =Toronto ,Canada
education =University of Toronto
occupation = Anthropologist, Linguist, Pharmacist, Composer, Artist, Translator
spouse = Ruth Alice (Warner) Hyman
parents =Ben Zion Hyman
Fannie Konstantynowski
children = Shayne (1954), Belarie (1956), Avi (1963)Gurion Joseph Hyman (
January 9 ,1925 ) – Canadian Jewish Anthropologist, Linguist, Pharmacist, Composer, Artist, and Translator. Primary contributions have been (a) liturgical compositions for the Passover Haggadah and Sabbath prayer service, (b) translations into English as well as the setting to music of several internationally acclaimed Yiddish poets, (c) an (ongoing) project to write an etymological dictionary of Yiddish, and (d) proprietor of the second branch ofHyman's Book and Art Shoppe .Early life
Gurion Joseph Hyman was born in
Toronto ,Ontario ,Canada , and lived above his parents’ bookstore onSpadina Avenue ,Hyman's Book and Art Shoppe , until marrying Ruth Alice Warner in 1952. The son of prominent Jewish community activists,Ben Zion Hyman and Fannie Konstantynowski (a descendant of RabbiShabbatai ha-Kohen ), Gurion Hyman graduated from thePharmacy program at theUniversity of Toronto in 1946. During his early years, Gurion Hyman was exposed to multiple languages and developed fluency or significant proficiency in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian and Polish. At the same time, he received formal piano training.Career Highlights
After graduating in Pharmacy, Hyman worked for a time as a dispensing pharmacist, most notably at Halpren Drugs on Spadina Avenue in Toronto. In 1952, Hyman, along with his wife, Ruth, opened a branch of the family bookstore business on
Eglinton Avenue in the Cedarvale/Forest Hill area of Toronto.In 1962, the couple sold the bookstore and Hyman returned to the University of Toronto to pursue a career in
Linguistic Anthropology . His primary area of scholarship was the reconstruction ofProto-Semitic , with particular emphasis on demonstrating the relationship betweenHebrew andAramaic usingNoam Chomsky 's deep structures theory.In 1973, Hyman resumed his career as a dispensing pharmacist, working until 1990 at The Sheppard Pharmacy (owner: Sidney Brown). Sheppard Pharmacy was located at Bathurst Street and Sheppard Avenue in Toronto's North York borough, and through most of the 1980s had the largest volume of senior citizen prescriptions in Canada. Hyman's role was to facilitate communication with the large and linguistically diverse client base of this pharmacy.
During this entire period, Hyman pursued an avocation as a composer, primarily of liturgical music, and by 1975 had completed his major work, a complete musical score for the
Haggadah of Pesach (Passover), which was eventually published in 1999. A second major liturgical work based on the Sabbath prayer service is due for publication in 2009.In the 1990s, Hyman began working on compositions (and in some cases translations) of the poetry of Yiddish and Hebrew writers. Prominent among those has been Peretz Miransky, Simche Simchovitch, Avraham Sutskever, and Natan Alterman. Two collections have been published to date (see below), and the music has been featured in a number of venues, primarily performed by the Toronto-based
Klezmer /Yiddish band De Shpeelers. More recently, Hyman has begun working with Spanish poetry and translating Yiddish poetry to Spanish. He has also completed several translations of Sherlock Holmes into Yiddish.Etymological Dictionary of Yiddish
An ongoing project is to produce an
Etymological Dictionary of theYiddish Language using multiple resources to 'best estimate' origin of word (Germanic, Semitic, Slavic, other). An intensive study of the 'word' in the original language is made. After compiling 'all' information available, the material is separated into three sections (a) Dictionary Entry with evolutionary path (b) Cross-referenced to Dictionary ofIndo-European Roots and cognates, where applicable (in planning is a similar section forProto-Semitic roots) (c) A definitional section of Yiddish-English correspondence.Presently completed are words starting with 'aleph-bais', also prelimina ry work on words starting with 'aleph-yod', as well as some with 'shin-aleph'.
amples of Work
Hyman, Gurion. "Songs of Joy and Consolation." Toronto: 1988. Music and translation based on the poetry of Simcha Simchovitch.
Hyman, Gurion. "Fruit from a Songtree." Toronto: 1990. Music based on the poems of Peretz Miransky (selected from the collections "Shures Shire," "Nit Derzogt," and "Canadish."
Hyman, Gurion. "Sing them to Your Children: New Melodies for the Passover Hagaddah and related texts." Toronto: 1999.
Hyman, Gurion. Memorial to Peretz Miransky. August, 1993. http://ftp.wayne.edu/ibiblio-academic/languages/yiddish/mendele/vol3.072
Hyman, Gurion. Semantics of O'GUL & HOIL. Mendele: August, 1993. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele/vol3.075
References
Gsner, Cynthia. "Lenka takes her listeners ‘to unique place’." The Canadian Jewish News, November 28, 2003.http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5116&Itemid=86
Gasner, Cynthia. "Hyman's provided sforim for every occasion." The Canadian Jewish News, August 26, 1999, p. B5.
Goldstein, Bonnie and Shulman, Jaclyn, eds. "Voices from the Heart: A Community Celebrates 50 Years of Israel." Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1998. (See section "412 Spadina: From a Conversation with Gurion Hyman." p. 90-91).
Metro Page. "Little Jewish library moves its 30,000 books." The Toronto Star, October 28, 1983, p. A6.
Reference to etymological dictionary: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/languages/yiddish/mendele/vol2.178
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