S. was born in 1881 in Iaşi, Romania. Her  parents were the actors Adolf and Beile Rosenblum.  At the age of six months she was brought on stage. When she was four she started acting in children’s roles in Romania under her father’s direction and later with the Treitler's troupe in Galicia. When she was eleven she was “Queen Esther” in Goldfaden’s play “Achashverosh” in Iasi, under her father's direction. 

From then on she acted the prima donna roles in operetta repertoire.  When she was thirteen, she traveled with her father’s troupe to Constantinople, then acted for a year at the Yiddish theatre in Egypt, and then in Romania again where she married Jacob Silbert. She acted with him in Germany and Hungary and then wandered off to America where she acted in dramatic roles for the first time then in the roles of mother[s] and grandes dames.

In America Silbert performed with the outstanding actors of the Yiddish stage. For a few years, she played with theatrical groups at various intervals. From 1919-20 and 1923-4 she acted with the Yiddish Art Theatre at the Irving Place Theatre (whose manager was then Jacob Ben-Ami), and in 1928-9 with the Yiddish Art Theatre. In 1929 she began to play with the Philadelphia Arch Street Theatre and then moved so she could act in New York, in English, in Dave Friedman’s comedy “Mendel Incorporated”.