Yerushalmi received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2001 and the Israel Prize in Theatre in 2008, among other awards and recognition.
[1] At age 20, after her mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Force, Yerushalmi moved to London, where she studied Laban movement analysis with Kurt Jooss and stage management at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
[2] Yerushalmi moved to the United States in the late 1960s to pursue her MFA in theater directing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[1] Yerushalmi's final project at Carnegie Mellon, under the mentorship of Professor Leon Katz, was an adaptation of Buchner's Woyzeck.
In 1970, after finishing her MFA, Yerushalmi moved to New York City and began working with Ellen Stewart's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan.