Mike Burstyn

Mike Burstyn, born Michael on July 1, 1945, and known in Yiddish as Motele, is an Israeli-American actor, singer, and filmmaker. Across a career that began in childhood and continued into the twenty-first century, he has worked in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and Dutch. His distinctive contribution has been to connect his family’s Yiddish theatrical tradition with Israeli popular culture, cinema, television, Broadway, and international entertainment.

Growing up in Yiddish theater

Burstyn was born in New York into a family of performers. His parents, Pesach and Lilian Burstyn, were prominent singers and actors in the city’s Yiddish theater. Mike and his twin sister, Susan, were brought into the family’s stage performances when they were children. Mike made his first appearances at the age of three, and the combination of acting, singing, and movement that shaped those early performances remained central to his career.

The family’s frequent travels made regular schooling and friendships difficult, but they also gave Burstyn unusual exposure to Jewish communities and audiences in several countries. He developed command of Yiddish and English and later worked extensively in Hebrew and Dutch as well. For him, Yiddish was not simply a family language; it was also a language of performance, memory, and living Jewish identity.

The Burstyn family in Israel

In 1954, the Burstyn family immigrated to Israel and brought its Yiddish repertoire with it. One of the family’s best-known productions was Wedding in the Shtetl, written by William Siegel and later adapted for film. After financial difficulties led the family back to the United States, it returned to Israel in 1962 and resumed performing popular Yiddish melodramas and comedies.

In 1965, the family took an artistic risk by presenting The Megillah, written by the celebrated poet and playwright Itzik Manger, at the Hamam club in Jaffa. Early performances for the family’s established audience raised fears that the change in style would be rejected. The official premiere, however, was a major success. Government ministers, journalists, leading figures in Israeli theater, and Manger himself attended. The production received strong critical and popular support and reached approximately 250 performances, an exceptional run for a Yiddish-language production in Israel at the time.

The success of The Megillah had significance beyond ticket sales. Hebrew-speaking audiences learned to value the production, while Israel’s Yiddish-speaking public gained a renewed sense of pride in its language and culture. The show later toured abroad, including an appearance in New York’s Broadway district, and critics identified Burstyn as a rising star.

Becoming an Israeli film star through Kuni Leml

Burstyn’s breakthrough in cinema came in 1966 with Two Kuni Lemls. Set against the world of the Jewish shtetl, the comedy of mistaken identities required him to play both central characters, shifting between contrasting personalities, voices, and comic situations. His father, Pesach, played the shtetl coachman. The film combined songs and dances, and Burstyn’s performance of Kuni Leml’s signature song, They Say I Am Not Myself, became closely associated with the character.

Two Kuni Lemls brought a Jewish folk figure to the center of Israeli popular cinema and made Burstyn a household name. He returned to the character in Kuni Leml in Tel Aviv in 1976 and Kuni Leml in Cairo in 1983. The first sequel achieved particular commercial success: Kuni Leml in Tel Aviv ranks ninth on a list of Israel’s most-watched films, with approximately 771,000 cinema tickets sold.

In 1977, Burstyn also starred alongside Aryeh Elias in Hershele. The film portrays Hershele, an Ashkenazi Jew living in a predominantly Mizrahi neighborhood, and uses the character to satirize corrupt politicians. Through these roles, Burstyn moved between traditional Jewish comedy and Israeli popular cinema, bringing stories, humor, music, and character types rooted in Jewish East European memory to a broad Israeli audience.

Singer, host, and performer for Israeli audiences

Burstyn established himself as a singer as well as an actor. In 1967, he won first place at the Israel Song Festival with Mi Yode'a Kama, written by Rimona di-Nur, composed by Yaakov Hollander, and arranged by Shimon Cohen. He later recorded a Yiddish-song album with Chava Alberstein, linking the voice of a successful Israeli performer with the Yiddish repertoire.

He performed for Israel Defense Forces soldiers during three of Israel’s wars. After the Six-Day War, he presented a show for soldiers with the American entertainer Danny Kaye, who was visiting Israel. In the early 1970s, Burstyn hosted a television program of his own on Israeli television, displaying his abilities as an actor, singer, and dancer. He also recorded a children’s album and appeared repeatedly at the Israeli Children’s Song Festival between 1977 and 1982, performing songs including Hippo Hippy, Donald Duck, Shalom Brוגז, Ha-Shafan Ha-Katan, and Shalom Al Ha-Olam.

From 1978 to 1979, he hosted the Israeli television program Give It a Chance. In 1981, he took part in the Israel Broadcasting Authority radio program Yours for a Little While, whose songs were also released on an album. That year he entered Israel’s Eurovision preselection competition with Around the World, which placed fifth.

In 1977, Burstyn received the Kinor David award for Actor of the Year. The award reflected the place he had secured in Israeli popular culture as a film and theater actor, singer, and performer able to reach children, soldiers, families, and general audiences.

International work, Broadway, and Yiddish theater

Alongside his Israeli career, Burstyn developed an international profile. From 1978 to 1981, he appeared on Dutch television in The Mike Burstyn Show, an entertainment and talk program. The show ranked among the ten most popular programs in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, extending his audience well beyond Israeli and Jewish communities.

Over the course of his career, Burstyn appeared in Broadway productions and musical theater, including Jolson, The Rothschilds, Guys and Dolls, and Fiddler on the Roof, in which he played Tevye. In Lansky, he portrayed the Jewish organized-crime figure Meyer Lansky. He also played attorney Roy Cohn in a drama about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. One of his most notable successes came in the Tony Award-winning musical Barnum; he later reprised the role in a Dutch production.

His work in English- and Dutch-language theater did not weaken his connection to Yiddish. In 2012, he appeared as a guest artist at Israel’s Yiddishpiel Theater in the musical Hershele, and in 2014 he took part in a production of The Government Inspector. These appearances continued his movement between the international stage and Israel’s Yiddish institutions, presenting Yiddish as a theatrical tradition capable of speaking to contemporary audiences.

Later work in film and television

Burstyn appeared as a guest performer in television programs and series including As the World Turns, Law & Order, Watchdog, and the Israeli series Elvis, Rosenthal and the Mysterious Woman. In 2017, he joined the Israeli series Juda, returning for its second season, which aired in 2020.

In 2018, his first film as a director, Azimuth, was released. Starring Yiftach Klein and Sami Shaker, the film marked a further expansion of Burstyn’s creative work from performing to directing, adding a filmmaking dimension to a career built on bringing stories and characters to audiences.

Why Mike Burstyn belongs in Moreshet

Mike Burstyn merits inclusion in Moreshet because his career embodies several important chapters in Jewish and Israeli cultural history: New York Yiddish theater, the cultural life of early Israel, Israeli popular cinema, and the international stage. He did not merely preserve a family tradition; he made it accessible to new audiences in Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and other languages.

The family’s performances, the success of The Megillah, his dual role in Two Kuni Lemls, the subsequent films, his recordings for adults and children, performances for soldiers, and work at Yiddishpiel show how Jewish popular culture could become part of Israeli life without losing its language, humor, or historical memory. His Broadway and Dutch television work gave that heritage an additional international dimension.

For Moreshet.com, Burstyn’s story is therefore more than the biography of a successful entertainer. It records how one actor, singer, and filmmaker carried a Jewish theatrical tradition across countries, languages, and communities, influencing the ways generations of Israelis and Jews encountered the stage, cinema, and Yiddish culture.