Where and when Friedman was born, there is not any confirmed information. So it is also not known the conditions through which she came to the Yiddish theatre, soon in the first beginnings of the Goldfaden theatre.

Goldfaden's troupe was made up of only men. The first woman who managed to persuade her to become a Yiddish actress must have been Sophie Goldstein, the wife of the actor Shachar Goldstein (later the wife of Karp), who had with marriage had it so that her family permitted her to play Yiddish theatre, but when Goldfaden's troupe came back to Iasi and performed his play there, "Di shtume kale," a certain Rose was drawn in to play the role of the "bride" (without words).

Zalmen Zylbercweig writes:

"One cannot know for sure, but it is not excluded that this was indeed Rose Friedman. Soon, however, you don't hear from her again, and Goldfaden was successful in recruiting a certain Golditse into the troupe. ... the first news about Rose Friedman as an actress is not from Goldfaden's troupe, but from the newly formed split troupe under the leadership of the first Yiddish actor, Israel Gradner. Initially when the troupe exploded and was reunited with Goldfaden's troupe, the glorious period began in Rose Friedman's stage career. Goldfaden  wrote for her in the comedy, "Brayndele Kozak," a name that is like Shmendrik or Kuni Lemel, which became a synonym of Jewish life. Goldfaden tells that he was inspired to write the play for her after a conversation with her about her private life. He then took the known Offenbach operetta, "Bluebeard," and turned it into "Brayndele Kozak," and it was staged with Rose Friedman in the title role in Bucharest."

About this, Goldfaden's first manager, Yitzkhok Liberesko tells:

"Goldfaden used to have the habit of writing the main roles of his plays, adapting them for his actors. He excelled in studying the character of his main actors and afterwards wrote a great role, which had the same qualities as the actor who had to play it. And anyway, the actor was excellent in the role.  ... Thus he created "Brayndele Kozak" for Rose Friedman. She was so glorious in the role that people completely forgot what she was called, and everywhere they called her, "Brayndele Kozak," When she used to go in the street, they pointed at her with their fingers, that there goes Brayndele Kozak."

A second eyewitness from that era, the playwright Yosef Latayner, tells that when Friedman, for the first time performed in the role of this "young girl" in Goldfaden's "Bobe mitn eynikl," she already was not young, and also not beautiful, and additionally she had a hoarse voice.

According to an eyewitness, the actor Cesar Greenberg he had met her in the streets of Galatz, Romania, standing with the singer Boyke, with a saucer by a barrel organ. She used to sing and collect the "honorarium."

According to the actor Sigmund Mogulesko, who played with her for the first time at the beginning of Yiddish theatre, she was s songstress and a dancer in the coffee-houses of Constantinople, turkey. He remarked sarcastically, by the way, that: "She had nothing to be ashamed of and became a Yiddish actress."

According to the actor Meir-Wolf Schwartz, in the first days of Yiddish theatre in Romania, he, together with her, founded a dramatic club that used to perform vaudeville in Yiddish.

Zalmen Zylbercweig writes:

"It is evident, however, that she got her big stage break in the title role of "Brayndele Kozak."  One can easily see that her absence in Odessa caused a scandal in the Yiddish theatre there. This was in May 1879, when due to the Russia-Turkey War the Yiddish theatre had to move over from Romania to Russia. Goldfaden arrived with his troupe in Odessa and started playing in the club of the Mariinsky Theatre. Here he had staged the comedy, "Brayndele Kozak," but in the meantime, he had already appeared to attract into his troupe a new actress, Margareta Schwartz, to whom he had given the title role in "Brayndele Kozak," but when she appeared on the stage, a scandal broke out in the theatre, and the audience, who saw Rose Friedman in the title role in Romania, began to demand her. The result  was that Goldfaden had to send for her in Iasi, where meanwhile she had already was heading a troupe, and on 12 May 1879 she performed in Odessa in the role, and this theatre began to become so overfilled, that the dissolved into a rosy life. Here again I lose track of her activity for a few years."

B. Weinstein  -- a witness of the Goldfaden productions in Odessa, writes:

"Goldfaden, in that time, excited the Odessa public with a new actress, a certain Madame Friedman, who he had brought from Romania, and she performed for the first time as "Brayndele Kozak." The crowd liked her very much. Mrs. Friedman played the role of the stepmother in the "Kishuf-makherin (The Sorceress/Witch)," and the role of the mother in all the other plays. She also used to sing couplets."

According to the information from Leon Kornfeld, who yearlong had performed with Yiddish theatre in Constantinople, she played there with Kalmen Juvelier's troupe. Here she married a singer, a certain Yehoshue, and when the troupe left Constantinople, she remained there and founded a quartet (she, her husband, a singer Chaim-Yankl, and a certain Radesko). then she went to Greece, where she went with her husband, then returned back to Constantinople, and for eight months played Yiddish theatre with amateurs under the direction of Leon Kornfeld.

She again for a certain time disappeared from the Yiddish theatre. In 1915 she guest-starred in Bucharest with Itsikl Goldenburg as "Brayndele Kozak" and continued her success. However, she didn't play for long and became the same director in Iasi, a comptroller (ticket-taker) in a theatre.

At the end of 1917 she met the actor Moshe Loznik in Belz, Bessarabia, played with the actor Masoff and several local amateurs. she performed as "Basye" in Goldfaden's "Kishuf-makherin," then in her crown role, as "Brayndele Kozak." According to Loznik, she looked cheerful, in good spirits, and she used to tell a lot about her experiences. Then she played with Loznik in Britsheve, again as "Brayndele Kozak," as well as "Shifra," in Gordin's "Der vilder mentsh." Later they traveled to Ritshkan where she became ill and wasn't able to perform, and she was transferred to Belz, where she lay for several weeks in a hospital, and she passed away on 9 March 1918.

Zalmen Zylbercweig writes:

"About her death and the data about her death were given in various versions. So we have the theatre director and actor Itsikl Goldenburg who said that still in 1920 she was the comptroller for him in a theatre in Iasi, and that she later passed away in Kishinev. But being alone in Belz (in 1934), during my trips across Romania and Bessarabia, I heard that there she passed away. An entire group of theatre lovers and friends talked to me constantly about her and incidentally pointed out this remarkable fact that Belz, where she found her eternal rest, who in any case was the first Yiddish soubrette, indeed Rose Friedman, later brought us one of the most prominent and most important modern Yiddish soubrettes, Iza Kremer. In the women's section of Beit Olam, we came to a place where there was a grave, in the form of a monument, a tombstone, on which there was inscribed, only in Hebrew: "Honorable wife Raizl, daughter of Rabbi Avraham Friedman of Maraminia, born in ... Adar 1855." ... But two things on the tombstone are worth mentioning. First, the fact that her father's name is given as Abraham. This doesn't mean to say for sure that he indeed was called Abraham. We know for a fact that when the Jews do not know the name of the father, by religious ceremony, they use the name Abraham. Secondly, that what it says, that she comes from Romania, does not prove whether she was not born in Belz or in another city in Bessarabia, because then when she passed away, in any case when they erected the tombstone, Belz and Bessarabia were thought of as being a part of the kingdom of Romania, and under the harsh political conditions that ruled there at that time, no Jew would have been used to writing Belz or another Bessarabian city: Bessarabia or Russia as a whole, local amateurs added that being in Belz, she used to study with choirs and direct with them. At the same time it is interesting that in private life she was very old, but as soon as she got on the stage, she was literally unrecognizable, and you couldn't see her age in any way. The political conditions at that time in Bessarabia was such, that the greater part of Yiddish actors had left Belz, and at the funeral procession of Rose Friedman's funeral, there only remained a number of actors. Miriam-Leah, the butcher, sold the items that the deceased had left over, and that's why she bought shrouds, a grave, and with the remaining money let the tombstone be erected."

Sh.E. from Leon Kornfeld
M.E. from Moshe Loznik and Itsikl Goldenburg, Yosef Latayner, Meir-Wolf Schwartz and Cesar Greenberg.

-- B. Gorin -- "History of Yiddish Theatre," Volume I, pages 193, 197.
-- Zalmen Zylbercweig -- "Behind the Curtains," Vilna, pages 71-76.
-- B. Weinstein -- The First Years of Yiddish Theatre in Odessa and in New York, Vilna-Warsaw Archive, 1930, page 246.