Yaakov Malkin

Yaakov Malkin was born in 1926 in Warsaw

Malkin was born in Warsaw on 3 August 1926 to a secular Jewish family. His father, Dov Ber Malkin, was a lecturer and theater critic. He moved to Mandatory Palestine with his family at age 7 and studied in Histadrut schools.

From 1944 he published literary, theater and film criticism and edited a Hashomer Hatzair magazine. In 1947 and 1948 he was a broadcasting officer in an underground radio station. After the war he lectured in the Cyprus camps and worked for military procurement in France.

In the 1950s he taught at Seminar HaKibbutzim, headed the repertoire department of Habima, and founded a Hebrew ulpan in Paris. From 1958 to 1971 he founded and ran community centers in Haifa, including Beit Rothschild and Beit Hagefen. From 1971 to 1981 he founded and directed the Mateh Yehuda community college.

He taught aesthetics and theater and film criticism at Tel Aviv University from 1969 to 1994. In 1971 he cofounded its Department of Cinema and Television with Moshe Lazar. He also helped found the Tel Aviv Cinematheque.

In 1995 he founded the magazine Free Judaism and edited it. He served as provost of the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism. He married the painter Felice Pazner Malkin in 1950 and died on 21 July 2019.