L. was born on 22 March 1893 in Odessa, Ukraine. Her father was a manager in Spivak's bakery. At the age of twelve she learned privately., then as an extern, later she learned in the Odessa gymnasium of Rashkovsky.

Together with her older sister she participated in amateur circles, and they often used to travel around, performing in roles in the professional troupes of Zhitomirsky, Meyerson et al, in the adjoining places of Odessa.

In 1909 she withdrew from her studies, against the wishes of her parents, and she entered into Korik's provincial troupe, where she debuted as "Dinah" in Schorr's operetta "A mentsh zol men zeyn", and then returned to Odessa, where she joined Sabsey's troupe and she acted for two years in Odessa as a prima donna.

In 1914 she acted with Avraham Fishzon and went on the tour across Russia and the Ukraine. In 1915 she acted with Clara Young. At the end of 1915 she traveled with a collective (under the leadership of Zhelazo, Myodovik and Shtokfeder) in Siberia, where in some places Yiddish theatre was performed for the first time. In 1917 she acted with Jacob Libert in the Volga region.  At the end of 1917 she acted in Nikolayev in Zaslavsky's troupe. After the Yiddish Artists Conference, L. was the chief of the cooperative troupe in Homel (Director Moshe Lipman), from where she went over to Kiev into a local cooperative troupe and acted there until the end of 1918.