New Book on Jewish Theater in Late USSR

The Tel Aviv publishing house Beit Nelli published Alexander Chernov’s monumental documentary volume “My Jewish Theatre”. The book, written in Russian, with 450 pages of text and about 350 illustrations, is devoted almost entirely to the history of the Moscow Jewish Drama Ensemble (since 1988 – Moscow Jewish Theater Shalom). The ensemble was created in 1962 by a group of former GOSET (Moscow State Jewish Theatre) actors headed by Binyomin (Veniamin) Schwarzer.

Alexander Chernov, who now lives in Israel, belongs to the last generation of Moscow Jewish actors who played in Yiddish. In the past three decades, Russian has become virtually the only language of the Shalom Theater. Excerpts from his book were previously published in Yiddish in the magazine Yidishland. Based on the materials of his book, Alexander Chernov also made the documentary film “Moscow Jewish Drama Ensemble”, which is publicly available on YouTube. This film was shown with Yiddish subtitles on Birobidzhan TV.