Yiddish Actor, Yiddish Poet Share $1000 Prize; Two Israelis Also Prize Winners

Hermann Yablokoff, a veteran Yiddish actor of the days when New York’s Second Avenue was as bright as Broadway, is one of the recipients of the annual Tzvi Kesseli Literary Awards, it was announced here today by a spokesman for the Culture Committee of the Jewish Central Committee. Yablokoff shares the first prize of $1,000 with poet Joseph Rubinstein. Two Israeli writers, poet Abraham Broides and Chein Shimone, were named second-prize winners, each awarded $250. Yablokoff was cited for his 1500-page two-volume literary work “Around the World With Yiddish Theatre” published 1969 in New York by Yiddish Theatrical Productions. Inc. The Yiddish stage star, now president of the Hebrew Actors Union in New York City, is remembered affectionately by Jewish audiences for the roles he created in such Yiddish productions as “Sammele’s Bar Mitzvah”; “My Son and I,” and the world-famous “Papirossen.” In 1946, under the auspices of the Joint Distribution Committee and the U.S. Army, he travelled to Europe where he staged a one-man show to 250,000 refugees in DP Camps in Austria, Germany and Italy. He was awarded a gold medal by the JDC and U.S. Army for his exceptional work. The Tzvi Kessel Literary Awards, established 24 years ago by a prominent Mexican Jew, is under the auspices of the Culture Committee of the Mexican Jewish Central Committee.