Mikhl Yashinsky is a writer, singer-actor, and teacher in Manhattan. He was born in Detroit and graduated with a degree in European history and literature from Harvard. His “The Gospel According to Chaim,” put on by New Yiddish Rep in 2024, was recognized as the first new full-length Yiddish-language drama produced professionally in the United States for many decades and “jolted the repertoire with a work that is both traditional and delightfully subversive” (Forward). His Yiddish-language erotic one-act “Blessing of the New Moon” premièred at 2022's Lower East Side Play Festival. He is currently writing a Yiddish-language gangland musical, “Feast of the Seven Sinners.” With National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, he performed in the Yiddish-language “Fiddler on the Roof” directed by Joel Grey, “Amid Falling Walls,” and “The Sorceress,” in which Mikhl brought a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role (New York Times). In 2023, Yashinsky made his Carnegie Hall début in the Holocaust memorial concert “We Are Here.” He has taught Yiddish at Columbia, University of Michigan, and Tel Aviv University, and co-authored the award-winning textbook “In eynem.” His translations of the memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, “Mama of Yiddish Theatre,” and the detective stories of Max Spitzkopf, “Yiddish Sherlock Holmes,” are forthcoming from Bloomsbury and the Yiddish Book Center, respectively.
