YISROEL BEKER (ISRAEL BECKER)

YISROEL BEKER (ISRAEL BECKER) (June 13, 1917-May 2003)

            He was born in Bialystok.  He studied in religious primary school, yeshiva, and a Taḥkemoni school in Bialystok.  He acted in a wandering Yiddish theater troupe.  Over the years 1940-1944, he studied in the Moscow Yiddish State Dramatic School.  In 1945 he directed the Holocaust film Lang iz der veg (Long is the road) and wrote the Yiddish text for it.  From 1948 he was living in Israel.  Until 1982 he acted with Habima and also directed more often his own plays.  Most recently he had turned his attention to painting and published the album Di bine fun mayn lebn (The stage of my life) (Tel Aviv, 1979), 84 pp. of pictures and 22 pp. of biographical introduction.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 101.