Michael Dorfman

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Michael Dorfman (Russian: Михаэль Дорфман Hebrew: מיכאל דורפמן‎) (born 1954, Lviv, Ukraine) – Russian-Israeli writer, essayist, journalist, and human rights activist. Revivalist of the Yiddish culture among the Russian Jews.

Dorfman issued more than 300 essays and articles in Israel, Russia, U.S., Germany, Belgium, Poland, Holland and Ukraine. Dorfman writes mostly in Russian.

In 1992 – 1999 - publisher and chief-editor of Russian-Israeli newspapers Negev and Aspects – pioneer of printed journalism for local Russian-speaking communities.

1994-2001 – contributed investigations to Israeli mass media for relevant topics, affecting the Russian émigré community, such as organized crime, inequality in workplace, housing, narcotics related problems, military draft, children’s advocacy, human trafficking, and rights of sex workers. Freelanced for various Russian and European mass media.

In 1994 established the NGO LaMerkhav ('At large' in Hebrew) which dealt with abuse, violence, and discrimination in Israeli public schools. Projects included – a hotline for children, Center for Monitoring Child Abuse, support groups for schoolchildren – victims of hate motivated violence. LaMerkhav also conducted unique projects for developing community leadership for the youth.

In 1999 led an action Russian Panthers against Racism that turned attention of Israeli public to the problems of Russian émigré children in public schools.

From 2001 Dorfman worked in USA and contributed to the movement for the revival of Yiddish culture among Russian Jews. In 2001-2006 Dorfman wrote various essays that were published in The Jews and the life and The Jewish thesaurus (in print).

From 2004 Dorfman contributed essays to the literary monthlies Nota Bene (Jerusalem, Israel), Lebed (Boston, MA [1]), Unipress (Denver, CO [2]), Ami (St. Petersburg, Russia [3]), Scepsis ( Moscow, Russia [4]) TryPress Moldova [5] etc.