Mikhl Yashinsky

Mikhl Yashinsky was born in Detroit and graduated with a degree in European history and literature from Harvard. A Yiddish teacher, translator, performer, and playwright, he is among the few people writing contemporary dramatic works for the Yiddish stage today. With the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, he has performed in the Yiddish-language Fiddler on the Roof directed by Joel Grey and the classic operetta The Sorceress, both New York Times “Critic's Picks.” In the latter, he brought a “keen, if malevolent, psychology” to the title role of Bobe Yakhne (New York Times). His play The Gospel According to Chaim (New Yiddish Rep, 2023–4) “jolted the repertoire with a work that is both traditional and delightfully subversive” (Forward), and his musical Feast of the Seven Sinners (14Y Theater, 2025) was hailed as a “saucy spectacle which sprouts excitingly unorthodox fruit” (Forward). He has taught Yiddish at Columbia University, the University of Michigan, UMass Amherst, Tel Aviv University, YIVO, and The Workers Circle, and co-authored the award-winning In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook (White Goat Press). His translations from Yiddish include: as co-translator: In the World of Chaos: Selected Early Works by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Academic Studies Press, 2026); and, as translator-editor: The Mother of Yiddish Theatre: Memoirs of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (Bloomsbury, 2025) and Adventures of Max Spitzkopf: The Yiddish Sherlock Holmes (White Goat Press, 2025), which was named one of the Best Indie Books of the Year by Kirkus Reviews.