Alexander Jonathan Vidgop is a theatre director, author, and screenwriter. Alexander is the founder of the Am haZikaron Institute for Science and Heritage of the Jewish People. He is the recipient of the Zeiti Yerushalaim Prize and the medal “For contribution to the development of the national spiritual heritage of the Jewish People.” Alexander was born in Leningrad in 1955. In 1974, he was expelled from what is now the Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts “for behavior unworthy of of a Soviet student.” Having worked as a locksmith, loader, and White Sea sailor, he was drafted into the army and sent to serve in the Arctic Circle. Upon graduating from the Russian State Academy of Performing Arts in 1982, he was involved in 23 productions across the USSR, 12 of which were shut down. In 1989, he emigrated to Israel, where he worked as a director, editor, and researcher. His latest novel Testimony is forthcoming from the leading Russian Publishing House NLO. Alexander Jonathan Vidgop is the recent winner of the Meridian Editor’s Prize in Prose.