Musical Showcase: Lea Koenig, Shtisel Grandmother, Sings "My Way" in Yiddish

Lea Koenig was born in 1929 in Łódź, Poland, to a secular Jewish family of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Her parents were the Yiddish actors Dina and Józef Kamień. She spent her childhood in Poland, then in Tashkent, in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Her father was murdered in the Holocaust. 

In the end of the 1940s, Lea Koenig and her mother emigrated to Romania, where she began studying at National University of Arts in Bucharest and debuted at Jewish Theatre.  In 1961, she emigrated to Israel.

Primarily acting in Hebrew, Koenig performs in Israel and all over the world also in Yiddish theaters.She speaks English, Hebrew, German, Polish, Romanian, Russian and Yiddish.

Koenig, now 95 years old and nicknamed the First Lady of Israeli Theatre, had an important role in the popular Israeli TV series Shtisel, where she played Bubbe Malka, Shulem Shtisel's mother.

In this video she sings My Way in Yiddish, with the original English lyrics that Paul Anka wrote and gave to Frank Sinatra translated to Yiddish by Zvi Stolper. The clip was produced with the kind support of The National Authority for Yiddish culture.

Enjoy!