Haim Kaufman was first exposed to Israeli folk dance as a teenager in the Hebrew Club at his public high school in the Bronx.

He thought he was coming to practice Hebrew.  Haim realized his mistake, but he could not flee because the girls were not about to let a rare male escape.  So he ended up being dragged through El Ginat Egoz, under protest. 

It was also the lack of boys that led him to be cajoled into joining a Zionist youth movement dance troupe to perform in the dance festival directed by Fred Berk.  

Dani Dassa was the choreographer of the troupe from whom Haim learned Hava Neitze B'machol and Al Tira a la Karmon staging. 

Dani also taught the troupe an intensive weekly class for six months where Haim learned the repertoire Israeli dances. 

After that he was hooked and began to attend the weekly Fred Berk Israeli folk dance sessions at the 92nd St. Y with its largely teenage crowd.

Upon entering college, he promptly organized an Israeli folkdance class for the Student Zionist Organization (SZO), and joined the vatikim (veterans) in the SZO dance troupe as its youngest member, which performed in Fred Berk's New York Dance Festival (introducing Karmon classics such as Haroah Haktana and Mechol Hakerem). 

SZO selected Haim to study at the Institute for Youth Leaders from Abroad in Jerusalem, where he attended two classes in Israeli folk dance daily and went to sessions several nights a week. 

During his year in Israel,  Haim attended a seminar for dance teachers at Bet Sefer P'ilay Histadrut, where he first met Gurit Kadman at a workshop of Debkas by Vicky Cohen. 

While working in Haifa at a summer job for students, he  participated in Shalom Hermon's weekly session in Haifa (Shalom was amazed that this American kid knew all the dances).

Haim returned to lead the SZO dance group for Fred Berk's New York Dance Festival and continued to dance at the 92nd St. Y, where he occasionally demonstrated for some of Fred's special sessions.

He continued dancing on and off over the years and in 1987 organized Rikuday Dor Rishon as a weekly session in New York, to preserve and perpetuate the classic Israeli folkdances he loved that were being lost.  

In 1992, he initiated Shorashim - Roots of Israeli Folk Dance, an annual dance camp on Labor Day Weekend in New York, that brought some of the best teachers and choreographers of the classics to a national and international audience.


The choreographers and teachers from Israel that Haim has brought to Rikuday Dor Rishon and Shorashim read like a who's who of the great vatikim -- Yossi Abuhav, Tamar Alyagor, Se'adia Amishai, Mira and Yoav Ashriel, Shlomo Bachar, Dani Dassa, Eliyahu Gamliel, Moshiko Halevy, Shalom Hermon z'l, Tzvi Hillman, Yankele Levy, Yonatan Gabai, Ayalah Goren Kadman, Shimon Mordechai, Avi Peretz, Eli Ronen, Raya Spivak and Bentzi Tiram among others.

Haim continues this tradition by bringing Vicky Cohen, of Mamtera and Debka fame, to Shorashim this year in 2010.

Haim has been a Contributing editor of Nirkoda from its very inception, and is known for his many insightful articles about Israeli folkdance dance events, history and personalities.