Michal Govrin

Michal Govrin is the Content Developer for the Yom HaShoah Hitkansut at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a writer and a Professor at Tel Aviv University. At The Van Leer Institute, she founded an inter-disciplinary research group that created the Hitkansut L’Yom HaShoah.

Michal is a graduate of Tel Aviv University and has a doctorate in contemporary sacred theater from the University of Paris.

She has published twelve books—poetry, novels, and essays—that have garnered many prizes in Israel and abroad. Her works include the novel The Name (Hebrew: Hashem) (Kugel Prize and Koret Prize for Jewish books); Snapshots (Hebrew: Hevzekim) (ACUM Prize for literary achievement); the prose poetry volume The Making of the Sea, a Chronicle of Exegesis (Hebrew: Ma’aseh Hayam; Chronikat Perush), which is laid out as a page of Gemara; the novel The Shores of Ashkelon (Hebrew: Ahava al hakhof); the book Body of Prayer (Hebrew: Guf Tefila), co-authored with Jacques Derrida; and most recently The Passion of Jerusalem (Hebrew: Yerushalayim, Mekom HaTaavah).

Michal has directed plays in all the large theaters in Israel. She won the Margalit Prize for her translation and staging of Emigranci (Hamehagrim in Hebrew), by the Polish writer Sławomir Mrożek, and staged, inter alia, the world premiere of an adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Mercier and Camier. She is a pioneer of the neo-Jewish stream in Israeli literature and theater, and she has adapted for the stage the stories of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, The Journey of the Year (Hebrew: Masa Hashana) through the holidays of the year, and Gog and Magog by Martin Mordechai Buber.