Pepi Litman Male Impersonator Born Ukrainian City |link| -

Pepi Litman was born in a muddy lane of Berdychiv, a Ukrainian city that existed more in prayer than on any map. The year was 1874, give or take a winter. The name on the birth certificate was Pesha, but she shed it like a loose thread the first time she heard a cantor’s tenor slice through the Sabbath candles.

Audiences in Odessa, Warsaw, and New York didn’t know what to do with her. Women sighed. Men laughed uneasily, then laughed harder. In a packed Second Avenue theater, a heckler shouted, “Show us your hair!” pepi litman male impersonator born ukrainian city

The trouble began when a traveling Yiddish operetta troupe got snowbound in Berdychiv. The lead comic, a gin-blossomed fellow named Zelig, heard Pepi doing his own jokes from the back of the room—but in a lower register. He turned. “Who’s the boy?” Pepi Litman was born in a muddy lane

“I’m no boy,” she said, and lit a cigarette exactly the way he did. Audiences in Odessa, Warsaw, and New York didn’t

The house came down. Not because she was pretty. Because she was true —truer than the gender she’d left behind in Berdychiv’s frozen lanes. She never went back. Neither did Pesha.

Zelig laughed for a full minute. Then he hired her.