Jonathan Garfinkel

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Jonathan Garfinkel (* 1973 in Toronto ) is a Jewish-Canadian playwright who achieved fame especially with his play The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret (German: The Demjanjuk Processes ).

Life

Garfinkel comes from a Zionist family and learned Hebrew and Yiddish. He attended the Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto, which he graduated in 1987. As an adult he broke away from Zionism. He worked as a waiter, carpenter and teacher of English literature before devoting himself to writing.

In 2005 he published the lyric book Glass Psalms . The autobiographical volume Ambivalence followed in 2007 , in which he describes the solution from Zionism, which was triggered in particular by a trip to Israel . During his stay, he visited camps for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank . Jean Hannah Edelstein judged the book in the New Statesman : "This book is as painful as it is nice to read [...]".

About his play The Demjanjuk Trials , which premiered in Canada in 2004 and was staged by Catja Baumann in Germany at the Heidelberg Theater in 2010 , wrote Christian Gampert on Deutschlandradio Kultur : “[...] Jonathan Garfinkel [...] takes the liberty of saying: Such Processes are absurd, they just scratch the surface. Garfinkel, however, operates his audience uncertainty with theatrical means that are new in Germany on this topic: Understanding for the perpetrators, biting songs, court satire, Holocaust jokes. "

His piece House of Many Tongues (German House of many tongues ) was in Germany, in the Schauspielhaus Bochum , from Kristo Šagor staged. In the online portal DerWesten Sven Westernström wrote: “The playwright is a Canadian Jew. You should know that in order to understand why Garfinkel approaches a highly sensitive and emotionally charged subject such as the Middle East conflict with due respect, but also with a certain distance and liberating irony. His characters, whether Israeli or Palestinian, are all types that one likes [...] ”.

He also publishes as an author in the Jüdischen Allgemeine , The Globe and Mail and Walrus, among others . He lives in Toronto, Budapest and Berlin .

Garfinkel has received several awards. He received the Toronto Arts Council Senior Writers Scholarship in 2006 and the KM Hunter Award for best young dramatist in 2008 . In 2009 he received a scholarship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Christian Gampert: Holocaust-Cabaret , Deutschlandradio Kultur from March 31, 2010
  2. ^ Renee Ghert Zand: School's Out . In: The Jerusalem Report of May 23, 2011 (English)
  3. ↑ a b A Holocaust cabaret artist . In: Deutschlandradio Kultur from April 14, 2010
  4. ↑ Joshua Blum: Deeply personal look at Mideast . In: Winnipeg Free Press, October 28, 2008
  5. ^ Jean Hannah Edelstein: The divided self . In: New Stateman of March 31, 2008 (English)
  6. ↑ Jonathan Garfinkel in jewsy.com (English)
  7. ↑ Sven Westernströer: Two under one roof ( memento from July 28, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), Der Westen, October 20, 2008
  8. ↑ Jonathan Garfinkel in Playwrights Canada Press (English)
personal data
SURNAME Garfinkel, Jonathan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian playwright
DATE OF BIRTH 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Toronto