Mikhl Yashinsky

Mikhl Yashinsky is an actor-singer, Yiddishist, and writer born in Detroit, educated at Harvard, and currently based in Manhattan. His work as a stage director of opera has brought him to such institutions as the Detroit Opera House and Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. His own plays have been performed at the Harvard Playwrights Festival, the Candlelight Theatre in residence at the Indianapolis mansion of President Benjamin Harrison, the New Yiddish Rep, and Detroit Opera. He acted in the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s productions of Fidler afn dakh (Fiddler on the Roof), directed by Joel Grey, and Di kishef-makherin (The Sorceress), both of them New York Times “Critic’s Picks.”  As Bobe Yakhne, the Sorceress, he was hailed by the Times for bringing a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role.  At the Yiddish Book Center, he co-authored the new language textbook In eynem (All Together). His translations of the memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, “the mother of Yiddish theatre,” as well as early short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and the detective stories of Max Spitzkopf (“the Yiddish Sherlock Holmes”), are all contracted to be published by various presses in the near future. As a LABA Fellow for the year 2023, he is writing the book and lyrics for a totally original Yiddish-language musical. In 2019, Yashinsky was named to the "Forward 50," the newspaper’s annual list of “influential, intriguing, and inspiring” American Jews. www.yashinsky.com. Instagram/Twitter: @mikhldarling