Career
Born Zypora Tannenbaum, she worked in her native Poland as a midwife for many years, delivering hundreds of children, including during World World War II when she witnessed horrendous suffering. After emigrating to the United States in 1954, she became an actress. Spaisman, during her career as an actress, was long associated with the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre in New York City 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 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.
lieutenant 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, Mississippi Spaisman"s position with the company was taken over by Zalmen Mlotek and Eleanor Reissa, 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"s film Enemies, a Love Story (1989), an adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer"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, in Rhinebeck, New New York The camp was an offshoot of The Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute.
