Raikin Ben-Ari

Raikin Ben-Ari, born Efim Raikin on 15 July 1897 near Kyiv, was a Russian-born actor, stage director, and teacher who built a career spanning four decades primarily in the United States. He derived his stage name from his father's surname, adopting Raikin as his given name and appending Ben-Ari, meaning "son of a lion." Before turning to theatre, he received training in the sciences at a polytechnic school.

Ben-Ari was among the co-founders of the Habima Theatre in Moscow, a Hebrew-language company established during a period when revolutionary Russia was hostile to Jewish cultural expression. The company mounted a celebrated production of The Dybbuk, a play that would become a cornerstone of Jewish theatrical repertoire. During the 1920s, Ben-Ari and the Habima company brought that production to New York, where it appeared on Broadway in 1926. A division subsequently arose within the company: a portion of its members relocated to Tel Aviv and reestablished Habima there, where it endures today as Israel's preeminent Hebrew theatre. Ben-Ari was among those who remained in the United States.

Following the company's split, Ben-Ari founded the Pargot Theatre, the only Hebrew-language theatre in America. A practitioner of the Stanislavski method, he joined the faculty of Erwin Piscator's theatre workshop at the New School for Social Research, where his students included Marlon Brando, Walter Matthau, Tony Curtis, Tony Franciosa, and Rod Steiger.

In 1948, Ben-Ari relocated to California and established an acting workshop in Los Angeles, where Lucille Ball taught a comedy class. He also served as drama director of the Brandeis Institute in Simi Valley, California, a position he held for many years. In addition to his stage work, he appeared in film and television productions including Adventures of Superman, Al Capone, and Combat. Ben-Ari died of a heart attack on 2 January 1968 while visiting his brother in Moscow. He was survived by his wife Anna, known as Nussia, and their daughter Renah.