EZRA LAHAD

EZRA LAHAD (May 18, 1918-1995)

            The adopted name of Ezra Lakerman, he was born in Minsk.  He graduated from a Jewish senior high school in Vilna.  In 1935 he made aliya to Israel.  He served in the Hagana, later as an offer in Tsahal (Israeli defense forces).  During his military service, he studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  He devoted many years to collecting material on the history of Yiddish theater and Yiddish wedding entertainment.  He was a regular contributor to Bama (Stage) in Tel Aviv.  There he published work that was connected to Yiddish theater and a longer piece of research on wedding entertainers (nos. 95-96).  In the yearbooks Ḥefa (Haifa), he published: “Yidish teater in erets-yisroel” (Yiddish theater in the land of Israel), nos. 2-3; “Sholem-aleykhem af der hebreisher bine” Sholem-Aleykhem on the Hebrew stage), nos. 3-4; and “Moyshe nadirs milkhome kegn shund-teater” (Moyshe Nadir’s war against trashy theater), no. 5.  He published a lengthy bibliography of Yiddish theater entitled “Undzer literarisher repertuar” (Our literary repertoire), in Yidisher teater in eyrope tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes (Yiddish theater in Europe between the two world wars) (New York, 1971), pp. 323-81.  In book form: Maḥazot amamiim beyidish (Folk plays in Yiddish), a bibliography of the published Purim plays and Goldfaden’s dramas in Yiddish (Haifa, 1970), 22 pp.  He wrote in this volume on Yiddish theater and wedding entertainers.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 322-23.