Zypora Spaisman (January 2, 1916 in

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

– May 18, 2002 in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

) was an actress and

Yiddish theatre Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues ...

empresaria.

Life in Poland

Born Zypora Tannenbaum, she worked in her native

as a

midwife A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery. The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their lifespan; co ...

for many years, delivering hundreds of children, including during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

when she witnessed horrendous suffering. After emigrating to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1954, she became an

actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...

Career in the United States

Spaisman, during her career as an actress, was long associated with the

Folksbiene The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, commonly known as NYTF, is a professional theater company in New York City which produces both Yiddish plays and plays translated into Yiddish, in a theater equipped with simultaneous superscript translati ...

Yiddish Theatre in NYC and, along with Morris Adler, kept it alive for 42 years. Following a dispute with the Folksbiene's new management in 1998, she founded the Yiddish Public Theatre. The Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre, originally located on the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

of Manhattan in what was then known as the Forward Building and later ensconced across from the Central Synagogue in its Community House building (both locations during Spaisman's tenure), is the longest-running Yiddish theatre company in the world. Founded in 1915 as an amateur group dedicated to producing non-commercial Yiddish theater and world drama in Yiddish translation, it turned professional in later decades. It was sustained by Morris Adler, who joined the company in 1934, and Spaisman, who joined twenty years later. During Spaisman and Adler's tenure, the Folksbiene remained a bastion for Yiddish literary culture. In 1998, Ms. Spaisman's position with the company was taken over by Zalmen Mlotek and

Eleanor Reissa Eleanor Reissa is an American actress, singer, theatre director, playwright, librettist, choreographer, translator, and author based in New York City. She works and performs in English and Yiddish speaking stages, and also interprets and perfor ...

, who were then named co-artistic directors. They invited Spaisman to stay on as a "consultant" but she opted to start her own company, the Yiddish Public Theater, which endured for one year before its demise. Zypora Spaisman assayed the role of Sheva Haddas in

Paul Mazursky Irwin Lawrence "Paul" Mazursky (April 25, 1930 – June 30, 2014) was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. Known for his dramatic comedies that often dealt with modern social issues, he was nominated for five Academy Awards: three t ...

's film '' Enemies, a Love Story'' (1989), an adaptation of

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help ...

's novel of the same name. A documentary by Dan Katzir about Spaisman and her Yiddish Public Theater, ''Yiddish Theater: A Love Story,'' was released to much acclaim in 2006. In the summers, Zypora Spaisman worked as a camp nurse at

Camp Boiberik Camp Boiberik was a Yiddish cultural summer camp founded by Leibush Lehrer in 1913. In 1923 the camp purchased property in Rhinebeck, New York where it would remain until closing in 1979. It was the first Yiddish secular summer camp in America at ...

, in

Rhinebeck, NY Rhinebeck is a village in the town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The population was 2,657 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie– Newburgh– Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well a ...

. The camp was an offshoot of The

Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute Sholem is a given name and a surname. Notable people called Sholem include: Given name: * Sholem Yakov Abramovich (1836–1917), Jewish author, founder of modern Yiddish and Hebrew literature *Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916), Yiddish author and playw ...

Death

She was married to Joseph Spaisman until his death; the couple had one son, who survived her following her sudden and unexplained death from cerebral

trauma Trauma most often refers to: * Major trauma, in physical medicine, severe physical injury caused by an external source * Psychological trauma, a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event *Traumatic i ...

on May 18, 2002, aged 86.''New York Times'' obituary
/ref>

References

External links

IMDb bio

"Yiddish Theater: A Love Story" official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spaisman, Zypora 1916 births 2002 deaths Yiddish theatre performers Jewish American actresses American film actresses American stage actresses Polish midwives Holocaust survivors Polish emigrants to the United States Actors from Lublin Actresses from New York City 20th-century American actresses 20th-century American Jews