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Mihail FelzenbaumJewish poet, prose writer
Country:
 Israel |
Content:
Biography of Mikhail Felzenbaum
Mikhail Felzenbaum is a Jewish poet, prose writer, playwright, and theater director. He writes in Yiddish. Felzenbaum was born in the town of Vasilkov in the Kiev region of Ukraine in 1951. Soon after his birth, his family returned to the town of Floresti in Bessarabia, and after finishing high school, the future writer moved to Beltsy, where he lived with breaks for his studies at the Leningrad Institute of Culture (theater directing, art history, pedagogy, 1968-1975) until his departure to Israel in 1991. From 1976 to 1988, he worked as a director at the Beltsy State Drama Theater and taught theater skills at the Beltsy Pedagogical Institute. He also graduated from the Jewish group of the Higher Literary Courses at the Gorky Literary Institute. In 1989, he organized the Jewish Theater Studio in Beltsy, for which he staged several plays in Yiddish, including his own adaptation of Ilf and Petrov's story "Strong Feelings" in the form of a traditional Purimspiel "A Freylekhe Hasene" (A Joyful Wedding). He was the first chairman of the Beltsy Society of Jewish Culture "Menora". In 1989-1993, with breaks, he studied Yiddish dialectology at the Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, and in 1993-1994, he worked in Romania.
Works and Publications
Felzenbaum began to be published in the mid-1980s in the Moscow magazine "Sovetish Geimland" (Soviet Homeland). In Israel, he has released several books of poetry, drama, and prose, including "Es Kumpt Der Tog" (The Day Comes, 1992), "A Libe-Reign" (Love Rain, 1995), "Der Nacht-Malekh" (The Night Angel, 1997), "Un Its Ikh Bin Dayn Nign" (And Now I Am Your Melody, 1998), "Shabesdike Shvebelekh" (Sabbatical Matches, 2004). He is one of the founders of the literary association "Hemshekh Dor" (New Generation) and the creator of its almanac "Naye Veygn" (New Paths, since 1992). He is published in various Israeli periodicals, including "Di Goldene Kait" (The Golden Chain) and "Topl-Punkt" (Colon, Tel Aviv), as well as in "Di Pen" (Quill, Oxford), "Afn Shvel" (On the Threshold, New York), and "Idishe Kultur" (Jewish Culture, New York). His quasi-historical novel "Shabesdike Shvebelekh" (Sabbatical Matches, 1999) - possibly the only postmodernist novel in Yiddish - was released in book form in Russian and is being prepared for publication in Hebrew, English, German, and French. His poems have also been translated into Hebrew (the journal "77") and German ("Federmenschen", Berlin, 1996).
Dramatic Works
Felzenbaum's dramatic works lean towards the theater of the absurd and are conceived by the author more as an exploration of the possibilities of the literary genre than as potential theatrical productions. He published the drama "Meores-Amahpeyle" (Double Cave (Machpelah) in Hebron, the burial place of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives) and the comedy "Halt Dem Zak Un Shit Kartofles" (Hold the Bag and Pour the Potatoes), which he staged at the Dresden Rock Theater (under the title "Boncze-Schweig" or "Boncya-Silent", 1997). In 2007, the Dresden Rock Theater staged another play by M. Felzenbaum, "Kandiszucker" (Candy), translated from Yiddish by Detlef Hutschenreuter. From 1993 to 1998, he served as the executive director of the Yiddish Cultural Center in Tel Aviv, and until 2006, he was the head of the publishing house "Kh. Leyvik," one of the main publishers of Yiddish literature (Tel Aviv). He is the editor of the literary almanac "Naye Veygn" (New Paths) and the journal "Literarische Schriftn" (Literary Notes). He is the recipient of the Israeli literary prizes Gofstein (1999) and Schwartzman. He currently lives in Ramla.
Family
Mikhail Felzenbaum's daughter, Vira Lozinskaya (b. 1974, Beltsy), is a performer of Yiddish songs (see here), whose first CD "Dalnie Zvyozdy" (Distant Stars) on the theme of Bessarabia was released on the CD Baby label in 2007 and was among the finalists of the Seventh Annual Independent Music Award (IMA). Among other things, this album included three songs with lyrics written by her father, as well as other poets of Bessarabian and Romanian origin: Z. Rozental, M. Pinchevsky, E. Greenblat, Z. Bardichever, M. Oysher, L. Levin, and I. Manger.
