When Fraydele was a teen, the family settled in Philadelphia, and she found work in a pretzel factory, getting paid for every pretzel that didn't break. "Hating" the job, she begged her older brother Moishe to take her to New York.

She was an olive-skinned gangly kid who made her way on her own without the help of her immigrant parents. As a teenager, she was often rejected by her father for not having been born male, but she would eventually catch his attention when she was accidentally heard singing to herself one day. Recognizing her gift, grandpa Selig Oysher promptly began tutoring her in cantorial repertoire, and he then sent her out to "make a dollar," If you had asked her how it all came about, she probably would have said, "I had to make a living. When Papa heard me singing to myself one day by accident, he sent me to work right away."

Quickly, she caught the attention of audiences with her great "pipes," charisma, and guts. Her rise was meteoric and she became a star well before her brother, the legendary cantor/actor, Moishe Oysher.

She also was offered opportunities to sing as a female cantor in the synagogue, but times being what they were, she opted to remain on the stage. She didn't think of or refer to herself as a pioneer of feminism. However, long before the Jewish Reform movement came into being and women were embraced as rabbis and cantors in synagogues throughout the world, Fraydele Oysher was the woman who played the major role in paving this new road for women.

photo:  Fraydele Oysher in one of her roles, as a Yeshiva boy.

In 1935, Fraydele married Harold Sternberg, a basso profundo opera singer of the famed Metropolitan Opera House. The following year she traveled with her husband, who acted as her leading man, to South America for their honeymoon, concertizing and playing her signature shows from Canada to Cuba. She was billed simply as "Fraydele." He also had appeared on Broadway in a number of George Gershwin shows, such as "Pardon my English" (1933), "Let Them Eat Cake" (1934); also "The Eternal Road" (1937).

Fraydele's biggest hits on the Yiddish stage had her masquerading as a boy who could officiate at the bimah, who in the last act would be revealed as being a sexy vibrant lady. Imagine this, the Yeshiva bucher, (boy student) played by Fraydele, revealing that she is pregnant in the last scene, and actually going into labor, as the Rabbi cries out to the congregation. "Gevalt yidn, der chazn gait tzu kint!"  Translation; "Oh boy, the cantor is giving birth!"

The audiences went wild, especially when such shenanigans were racy in those days, and inhabited by a magnificent cello of a voice, a natural comedic gift and a vocal range that touched hearts. She was the pioneer of liturgical music way before a woman ever dreamed of singing it. And in that respect, a feminist before the word was coined.

One of her later stage appearances was on 19 October 1968, when there was staged at the Yiddish Anderson Theatre in New York City, the Yiddish musical "It's Never Too Late for Happiness" [book by Kalman Lipson, lyrics and adapted by Joseph Jacobs, music by Samuel Fershko, starring Fraydele, Bruce Adler, Max Perlman, Jacob Jacobs, Seymour Rechtzeit and Miriam Kressyn, Jacob Zanger, Leon Liebgold, Gita Galina, Thelma Mintz, and Diana Cypkin]. New York Times critic Richard F. Shepherd considered Fraydele "a welcome sight."

A great wit, she nurtured a proverbial family of entertainers -- her daughter, the singer and comedienne, Marilyn Michaels; her son Michael Sternberg (a singer, musician and composer), and her grandson, Mark Wilk (a writer, pianist and singer).

Fraydele eventually turned down offers to travel abroad when motherhood called, and even though she performed well into her seventies, doing commercials and concerts, she was in fact the mom who was the major force behind her daughter, Marilyn Michaels' career.

Fraydele passed away on 5 January 2004 in New York, New York.