(Joseph Berger's article appeared in The New York Times, 3/16.)
Shifra Lerer, who was discovered at age 5 in Argentina by the great Yiddish actor Boris Thomashefsky and went on to become a winsome and wide-ranging trouper of the Yiddish theater for the next 90 years, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 95.
The cause was a heart attack and a stroke, said Hy Wolfe, a board member of the Hebrew Actors Union.
If not the last, Ms. Lerer was certainly among the few remaining actresses to have performed in the heyday of Yiddish theater, in the first half of the 20th century. Other stars of that era, like Mina Bern and Zypora Spaisman, have also died in recent years.
via www.nytimes.com