BIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Vidgop is a writer, director, and screenwriter, and the founder of the “Am haZikaron” Institute for Science, Culture and Heritage of the Jewish People, whose activities have been supported by a Committee of 55 Nobel Laureates. He is a laureate of the Zeiti Yerushalaim Prize and was awarded the medal “For contribution to the development of the national spiritual heritage of the Jewish People.”

He was born in Leningrad in 1955. During his “too long residence on the territory of one-sixth of the land mass,” he was sequentially expelled: from the literary-historical School No. 27 (despite taking 2nd place at the literary Olympiad); from the Institute of Culture (with the characterization “unworthy of the title of Soviet student”); from the entrance exams for VGIK (by the personal order of the rector of that educational institution); from Z. Korogodsky’s course at the Theater Institute (with a “categorical objection against the handing of a diploma to this student”); as well as from theaters in such cities as Orel, Rostov-on-Don, Vyatka, and others. Finally, in completion of this apotheosis, in 1988 he was deprived of Soviet citizenship at his own expense and finally released to his historic Homeland. During his time in the USSR, he managed to work as a cattle drover, a locksmith, a second-class sailor on the White Sea, an expedition laborer, a stagehand, and a private in the Soviet Army beyond the Arctic Circle (spending three months in the guardhouse), as well as a screenwriter and director. He staged 21 plays, 12 of which were shut down by the authorities.

In Israel, he worked as a director and researcher. He published a number of scientific articles on chaos theory in journals such as Physical Review E, Physica A, and others. He was awarded a special grant by the President of Israel for the publication of a book. He is the author of twelve books, ranging from fiction to philosophy, mostly published in Israel. The primary genre of his novellas is likely so-called “magical realism.” Critics have compared the writer’s work to the prose of such remarkable authors as Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Bruno Schulz. Not long ago, his novel Testimony (Svidetelstvo) was released in Russia by the Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie (NLO) publishing house in the “Artistic Literature” series. His stories in Russian have been printed in Israel and Russia. Translations of his novellas have been published in magazines in more than 30 countries, including The Los Angeles Review and Pembroke Magazine, and have appeared in annual anthologies in Ireland (Winter Wonderland 2023: Bindweed Anthology) and Sweden (Two Thirds North). In 2022, the novella “Nomads” received the annual Editors’ Prize in Prose from Meridian magazine at the University of Virginia. In 2025, Jonathan won a poetry competition conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and his poem will be included in the Proverse Poetry Prize anthology.