Ester Rachel Kamińska
Ester Rachel Kamińska née Halpern was a Polish Jewish actress, known as the mother of Yiddish theatre. She won fame as the star of a series of Yiddish theater companies managed by her husband, Avrom Yitshok Kaminski, touring in the cities and small towns of the Russian Empire from approximately 1893 to 1905. In Warsaw, in 1907 they together founded the Literary Troupe, the first Yiddish theater company to dedicate itself to a 'literary' or 'artistic' repertoire.
She was the mother of Ida Kamińska, the well known stage and film actress, who cofounded the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater in the 1920s, and, in 1946, following the Second World War, played in reestablished Yiddish theaters in Poland. Today the Jewish Theatre, Warsaw is named after the two actresses.
