Rita Karin

The daughter of victims of the Holocaust, Karin trained at the Moscow State Jewish Theater during WWII and began performing after the war with her husband, Norbert Horowitz, in a traveling Yiddish theater they created for Holocaust survivors. She immigrated to the US in 1949 and enjoyed a successful career in New York's Yiddish theater scene, later expanding to Broadway and off-Broadway in shows including "The Wall," "Yentl," "A Call on Kuprin," "Scuba Duba" and "The House of Blue Leaves." Karin also made intermittent feature film appearances beginning the 1970s; her most memorable roles include the boisterous landlady, Yetta Zimmerman, in "Sophie's Choice" (1983) and Mrs. Schreier in "Enemies: A Love Story" (1991). Her TV roles include a stint as Jackie Mason's mother on the ABC sitcom, "Chicken Soup." Karin also distinguished herself as a reader of the works of Sholom Aleichem, and performed them annually on the anniversary of the noted author's death.