Harry M. Orlinsky (14 March 1908 21 March 1992) was the editor-in-chief of the New Jewish Publication Society (NJPS) translation of the Torah (1962). Early life and education Harry Orlinsky was born in 1908 to Yiddish-speaking parents in Owen Sound, Ontario on March 17. Growing up, pool was one of his favorite pastimes. He attended the University of Toronto and began his religious studies with a Bible class taught by Theophile Meek. Under Meek’s mentorship, Orlinsky went on to earn his PhD at Philadelphia’s Dropsie College for his work on the translation of the Septuagint, the Jewish Greek translation of the Bible. While there, he met his future wife Donya Fein. Orlinsky then completed a year of post-doctoral work at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Upon his return to the United States, he started working at the Baltimore Hebrew Teachers College (1936-1944). During this time he also studied at Johns Hopkins University with William F. Albright. Because of World War II, Albright was unable to secure the necessary funds for Orlinsky to become a permanent member of the faculty at Hopkins. Instead, Orlinsky, with the help of Albright, was able to secure a post with the Jewish Institute of Religion in 1943 (now merged with the Hebrew Union College) and it is here that Orlinsky spent the rest of his career. Orlinsky married Donya Fein in 1934 and they had two sons, Walter (Velvel) and Seymour (Zeke). Orlinsky died on Saturday 21 March 1992 at North Oaks Retirement Community in Owings Mills, Maryland. He was 84 years old. Work as a translator Perhaps the greatest result of Orlinsky’s work on Torah translation was the creation of a gender-free translation of the Bible. Since the translator must interpret and explain the text, it behooves him (or her) to understand why certain words were used. If a language has a preference for masculine pronouns, is that because the reference is really to males, or does it have to do with the way a language functions? A similar example from modern times is the use of "guys" to refer to a group of people in general, regardless of gender. If the rest of the text did not use a masculine pronoun but rather used a more gender-neutral term such as "one," then Orlinsky felt it was safe to say that the translator can use that term as well for the masculine pronouns within