Literatureמרים ברנשטיין-כהן

Miriam Bernstein-Cohen

Miriam Bernstein-Cohen was an Israeli stage actress, director, writer and translator who received the Israel Prize for theatre in 1975.

1895 to 1991Early professional Hebrew stage actingFounding the Hebrew Theatre in Tel AvivThe 1975 Israel Prize for theatre

Born: 14 December 1895, Chișinău
Died: 4 April 1991, Tel Aviv
Occupation: translator, writer, stage actor, theatre director
Education: National University of Kharkiv, Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium

Miriam Bernstein-Cohen was born in 1895 in Chișinău

Miriam Bernstein-Cohen was born in 1895 in Kishinev, then in the Russian Empire. Her father was the Zionist leader and doctor Jacob Bernstein-Kogan. As a child her home was attacked during the Kishinev pogrom, and from 1907 to 1910 she studied at the Herzliya Gymnasium while her father worked in the Land of Israel.

She studied medicine in Kharkov and finished in 1918, while also studying acting in the evenings. During the Russian Civil War she was drafted as a doctor to fight a typhus epidemic. She then left medicine for acting and studied in Kiev and Moscow, including with Konstantin Stanislavski.

In 1921 she moved to the Land of Israel and helped found the Hebrew Theatre in Tel Aviv. In 1925 she founded the first Hebrew periodical in the country devoted to theater. From 1927 to 1935 she gave reading performances and taught acting in Eastern Europe and South Africa.

She returned to the Land of Israel in 1935 and founded the Palestinian Comedy theater in 1936, while teaching stage art. She also served in the second Assembly of Representatives for the Revisionist Zionists from 1926 to 1932. She received the Israel Prize in 1975 and died in 1991.