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The Jewish Agricultural Colony of Izlyuchistaya (Izluchistoye), Kherson Gubernia, located 107 kilometers
southwest of
Dnepropetrovsk, was the birthplace of Mordechai Golinkin on 21 March 1875. Mordechai's family was only
one of about fifty-three families in the colony. At the young age of ten, he was singing hymns in the
synagogue choir.
Pursuing his musical talent, Mordechai attended the Warsaw State Conservatory from 1891 to 1896, where
he earned a degree in composition. On completing his studies, Golinkin returned to Russia,
where he devoted his efforts to opera, a specialty for which he had a particular interest.
While pursuing his musical career, Golinkin also devoted himself to Zionism, which he had to do
surreptitiously because the Russian Government persecuted Zionists.
Golinkin became an assistant choir leader, an orchestral conductor
and, eventually, the chief conductor at the Opera Mariánské Petersburg.
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However, his religion
was a disability in Russia that precluded him from conducting at the Czar's Royal Marinskaya Opera in
Petrograd.
A project close to Mordechai Golinkin's heart was the establishment of Opera in Palestine and the
cultural revival of the Jewish People. In 1917, Golinkin
wrote an essay – Citadel of Art in Palestine – developing this idea. It would be a six-
year wait, however, before he arrived in Palestine on 6 June 1923; his goal: the creation of an original
Hebrew Opera.
David Tidhar's Encyclopedia
of the Founders & Builders of Israel
(in Hebrew)
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