Raikin Ben-Ari
Russian actor
Efim Raikin Ben-Ari (Hebrew: אפיים רייקין בן ארי; 15 July 1897 – 2 January 1968) was a Russian-born actor, stage director, and teacher, mostly in America. He co-founded the Habima Theatre in Moscow in the 1920s, acted on Broadway, founded the only Hebrew-language theatre in America, and taught and directed for four decades.
Early life and career
Ben-Ari, whose family name was Raikin, was born near Kyiv (now in Ukraine). He took his father's last name as his first name and called himself Raikin Ben-Ari, or "Raikin, son of a lion." After training at a polytechnic school in the sciences, Ben-Ari became interested in theatre. He co-founded the famed Habima Theatre in Moscow, a Hebrew-language theatre, at a time when revolutionary Russia did not look kindly on Jewish-oriented activities. The company produced a landmark production of The Dybbuk, a play which has gone on to be a staple of Jewish theatre.
In the 1920s, Ben-Ari and the Habima company traveled to New York and produced The Dybbuk on Broadway. A schism formed in the company and some members went to Tel Aviv, reestablishing Habima there, where it continues (now in Israel) to this day as the premiere Hebrew theatre company. Other members of the company, including Ben-Ari, remained in the United States. Ben-Ari founded the Pargot Theatre, the only Hebrew-language theatre in America.
“Raikin Ben-Ari” enters the record as russian actor. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Raikin, Ben-Ari and Russian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 4, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q18217896. VIAF identifies the subject as 22554547. The Library of Congress control number is nb2004304073. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raikin Ben-Ari” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.