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Artist
Shifra Lerer
8+ albums
yiddishGoleminterlope tango
about
Shifra Lerer (August 30, 1915 – March 12, 2011) was an Argentine-born American Yiddish theater actress based in New York City. Lerer appeared opposite every major Yiddish theater actor during her career, which lasted 90 years. She was also cast in film roles, including the 1997 Woody Allen film, Deconstructing Harry. Her father, a manager at a soap factory, had immigrated to Argentina from the Russian Empire to escape anti-Semitism and poverty through the sponsorship of philanthropist and banker, Maurice de Hirsch. Lerer was born in the Santa Catalina colony in Argentina on August 30, 1915. Lerer was discovered in Buenos Aires by Yiddish theater legend, producer and actor Boris Thomashefsky, who was starring in the area, when she was just five or eight years old, at the recommendation of her sister (the actress Miryam Lerer). At ten she was participating in Yakov Botashanski's productions in a theater circle. When she was older, she studied at a Spanish-language drama school and performed for three years on the Argentinian stage. She then passed the examinations for the actors' union and became a member, playing with the star Miryam Karalova-Kambarov, then Moyshe Oysher and Florence Weiss, finally playing in serious drama roles with Zygmunt Turkov in Urteyl, Hirsh Lekert, Ivan Kruger and Di glokn-tsier fun Notr-dam (The Bell-ringer (Hunchback) of Notre Dame). She played with Yakov Ben-Ami and Bertha Kalich in Wolf's Profesor Malok, Strindberg's Der Foter, and Leyvick's Der
