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Yiddish Theater: A Love Story

by Indy.com Staff

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Keeping a heritage alive: Actress Roni Neuman is interviewed in "Yiddish Theater: A Love Story," a documentary about an 85-year-old woman determined to keep Yiddish theater alive. (Photo provided by New Love Films)

HOLLYWOOD -- "Yiddish Theater: A Love Story" was not a film Israeli director Dan Katzir was planning to make. But when he met 85-year-old theatrical legend and ball of fire Zypora Spaisman, he couldn't help himself.

"I was captivated by her," he says, and this charming and disarming documentary makes it clear why.

A force of nature for whom the word indomitable is too mild, Spaisman has the kind of fighting spirit they just don't make anymore.

"Hitler couldn't stop me, Stalin couldn't stop me," she says, making it clear that no one else had better try. "Retirement is a death sentence: People have to live."

Living for Spaisman meant acting in New York's dwindling Yiddish theater scene. For more than 40 years, she was the driving force behind the Folksbiene, America's longest-running Yiddish theater, and when she was forced out she promptly started another group, the Yiddish Public Theater, in 2000.

Katzir, a former lieutenant in the Israeli paratroopers whose grandmother was an anti-Yiddish activist, met this irresistible woman in December of that year at a particularly pivotal moment.

Spaisman's new venture had just eight days to raise enough money to keep the theater open or it and her theatrical career would be over.

Sensing that he was witnessing the end of an era, Katzir recorded it all on a small video camera and ended up with an irreplaceable record of a life and a movement at a crossroads.

Given its origins, it's not surprising that "Yiddish Theater: A Love Story" has a catch-as-catch-can feeling to it. But nothing can take away from the flavor of being caught up in the battles and dreams of a formidable group of people.

For a brief moment in time, we share their struggles, and that feels like a privilege.