Yiddish Theater

I don't know much about the Yiddish Theater, since I do not understand Yiddish beyond a few well-known expressions. Of course I'm aware that the Yiddish Theater played a big role in secular Jewish New York for many years, and that only a few survivors remain from its famous actors. In today's New York Times I read the obituary of one of these -- 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."

In the two articles (here and here) about her in today's times, I learned quite a few things about these actors and about Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, where the theatrical alliance maintains a special section for those who worked in Yiddish theater in New York. Though I do know about the accomplishments of Thomashefsky, I knew almost none of the other names that were mentioned: Charles Malins, Chana Lipton, Isaak and Lola Feld, Mina Bern, Zypora Spaisman. It's sad that this is a lost artistic endeavor, but I fear that nothing can bring it to life it for me: not only the actors and the language are lost, but the conventions of that era and theatrical style no longer appeal to any but experts, I suspect.