Pepi Litman

Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (likely in what is now Poland or Ukraine), Litman grew up in an impoverished Orthodox Jewish household. Orphaned young, she was drawn to the itinerant Yiddish theater troupes that roamed Eastern Europe. Unlike the more established Russian or Polish theaters, the Yiddish stage in the 1880s–90s was raucous, folk-based, and open to outsiders.

Pepi Litman was not a name you found in a history textbook, nor was it a name that echoed through the halls of congress. But if you walked down the cobblestoned stretch of Kiker Street in the old quarter of the city, between the years of 1958 and 1985, the name Pepi Litman was currency. pepi litman

Pepi pointed a manicured finger at the boy’s chest. "You have a secret." Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (likely in what

"Pepi Litman did not need to hide. She walked onto the stage in a man’s coat and sang love songs to women, and the audience roared—not because they were shocked, but because they recognized something true." — Dr. Zalmen Zylbercweig, Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre (1931) Pepi Litman was not a name you found