Baruch Agadati

Baruch Agadati was born in 1895 in Bender

Baruch Kaushansky was born in 1895 in Bender, Bessarabia, in the Russian Empire, to a Jewish family. His father Arieh was a merchant. The family moved to Odessa, where he entered a ballet school despite his father's objection.

In 1910 he came to the Land of Israel alone and studied at the Bezalel school of art in Jerusalem. He worked in orchards in Petah Tikva and taught ballroom dancing. In 1914 he visited his family in Russia, was stuck there by World War I, studied ballet and danced with the Odessa Opera.

He returned in 1919 on the ship Ruslan. In 1920 he danced his work Yemenite Ecstasy in a dance recital in Tel Aviv, and in 1924 he created the Hora Agadati. He started the mass Purim balls in Tel Aviv and a Purim parade that grew into the Adloyada.

He began working in film in 1929. In 1931 he made the first Hebrew animated film, and in 1934 he bought Yaakov Ben Dov's film archive and started the AGA Newsreel with his brother Yitzhak. His 1935 film This Is the Land was the first with a Hebrew soundtrack.

In his later years he returned to painting. In 1976 he was named Worthy Citizen of Tel Aviv-Yafo. He died in Tel Aviv in 1976 and was buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery.