Michael Dorfman

Michael Dorfman was born in 1954 in Lviv

Michael Dorfman was born on 17 September 1954 in Lviv, in Galicia, then part of the Soviet Union. He immigrated to Israel in 1974 and studied Hebrew for a year at an ulpan in Jerusalem.

He traveled between countries, studied cooking in Switzerland and worked as a cook. He also took courses in linguistics and computers. Back in Israel, he worked for several years in the chemistry department of Ben-Gurion University.

His writing first appeared in the Russian-Israeli magazine Kroog in 1983. From 1992 he was publisher and chief editor of the Russian-language newspapers Negev and Aspects. He also reported on Soviet immigrants for Israeli television and radio.

In 1994 he founded the NGO LaMerkhav, which helped immigrants who suffered racist abuse and dealt with abuse in schools. He was a founder and head of the Russian Panthers protest movement in Beersheba. He also advised Beersheba mayor Yaakov Terner on immigrant affairs.

He has lived in the United States since the early 2000s, working on the revival of Yiddish culture among Russian speakers. In 2009 he published 3 volumes titled Jews and Life in Moscow.