Gur was born in 1862 in Pohost, Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (in Belarus within the Pale of Settlement), to Isaiah Reuben Gurzovsky, a descendant of the prominent rabbinical family of Maharshak.

In Mazkeret Batya, he married Rachel, daughter of Mordechai Naiman, one of the founders of the moshav.

[2] Gurzovsky, along with David Yudilovich and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, edited the first children's Hebrew newspaper, Olam Katan, which was published in 1892 in seven issues over ten months.

After a short period, Gurzovsky moved to Jaffa, where he taught at the school of Israel Belkind and served as the secretary of the B'nei Moshe society.

[6] A significant controversy arose over the nature of education between the Bnei Moshe members in Jaffa and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda on one side, and Yechiel Michel Pines and the Old Yishuv intellectuals on the other.

Yehuda Gur died on 21 January 1950, and was buried at the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.

[11] Gur was the father of three sons (Asaf, Amihud, and Isaiah-Shai) and two daughters (Hadassah Samuel and Nechama Ornstein).

He married Tzella, daughter of Tuvia Ziskind Miller, a leading figure in the Farmers' Association.

He published numerous articles in newspapers during the educational controversies, and as a teacher, he produced textbooks in Hebrew on various subjects.

[15] In 1892, Gurzovsky participated in publishing the children's magazine Olam Katan along with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and David Yudilovich.

He translated into Hebrew the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Jules Verne, as well as the book Robinson Crusoe.

From 1937, he worked on creating the "Useful Dictionary of the Hebrew Language," whose final expanded edition was published in 1947.

The dictionary was published with the help of Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, who carefully reviewed the drafts and made significant linguistic notes, most of which were accepted by the author.

The principles of our sages: 'Everything in excess is like it is missing' and 'Whoever adds, subtracts,' were always before the author's eyes in arranging the book...

The curriculum, in his view, was intended to build a Hebrew generation according to the vision of his friend Ahad Ha'am.