Diskussion:Yekhezkel Dobrushin

Dobrushin (1883-1953) was born in Chernigov, the son of a lumber merchant. After studying at the Sorbonne in the early 1900s, he returned to Russia and , in 1916, helped found the Kiev Kultur-Lige along with Peretz Markish and others. The Kultur-Lige was one of the first avant-garde Jewish literary and artistic circles in Russia which eventually spawned music, literature, art and theater sections. It was disbanded in 1924. In 1920 Dobrushin moved to Moscow where he became secretary of the Yiddish Writers Union. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Dobrushin became known as one of the most prolific Yiddish literary critics and dramatists of the era. He was a regular contributor to the Communist newspaper, Der Emes. Dobrushin was also very involved with the Soviet Yiddish State Theater, and served as one of its literary directors and a teacher at the Yiddish theater school. His numerous published works on Soviet Yiddish theater include biographies of Mikhoels, Benjamin Zuskin and a work on Children's Theater. Dobrushin was also the most prolific Yiddish playwright of the era, although only two of his plays, The Court is in Session (Der Gerikht Geyt) and The Specialist (which he wrote with Isaac Nusinov) were ever actually performed (at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater in 1929 and 1932 respectively). His other plays included Fire God and On the 82nd Strip of Land. Dobrushin's most productive work as a dramatist was in his adaptations of others' plays. He adapted Goldfadn's Sorceress and Tenth Commandment; A. Vayter's Before Sunrise; Mendele Moykher Sforim's Travels of Benjamin III; and Sholem Aleichem's Luftmentshen and Tevye the Dairyman, among others. In the late 1930s, Dobrushin collaborated with A. Yuditskii to compile a collection of Yiddish folk songs, which included both traditional songs and contemporary Soviet songs. During World War II, Dobrushin was a member of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee and a regular contributor to its newspaper, Aynikayt. He was arrested in 1949 and perished in the gulag, presumably in 1953.

Jeffrey Veidlinger