Yehoshua Bertonov

Yehoshua Bertonov was born in 1881 in Vilnius

Bertonov was born in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire. As a boy he studied in a heder and then at a Talmud Torah in the city, where two teachers noticed his talent. He later worked as a private tutor and clerk, and his brother Haim Shlomo, also an actor, helped him take his first steps on the stage.

He acted in the Russian municipal theater in Vilna, where a role filled in for a sick actor made him the troupe's lead comic actor. He went on to act and direct in other Russian cities, and for a time he directed the Russian state theater in Tiflis. He also founded a Jewish amateur group that performed in Moscow.

In 1912 he met Nahum Zemach and joined his Hebrew amateur group in Bialystok. In 1913 he directed the group's Hebrew staging of The Eternal Wanderer at the Zionist Congress in Vienna. He later joined Habima in Moscow and moved with it to Mandate Palestine in 1928, where he kept acting with the theater.

He received the Israel Prize for theater in 1959, and a hall at Habima bears his name. He died in 1971 and was buried in Holon. His daughter Devorah Bertonov was a dancer and choreographer, and his son Shlomo Bertonov was an actor and announcer.