Sh. was born in December 1871 in the village of Machasterik, Braslav Kreyz, Podolsk.

His father was a rich businessman of grain, lumber (forests), and guralnyes. His mother was a free spirit, a poetic soul with extraordinary capacities to sing and dance, tell jokes, anecdotes and stories.

He learned in a cheder and already at the age of thirteen or fourteen manifested a desire for writing, at first in Hebrew, and a little later in Yiddish.

At the age of twenty-two he immigrated to America, the first four years he underwent all "seven sections of Hell". He worked in a factory and in his free time would write. At the age of thirty-two he first debuted in David Pinski's "Abend blat" with a monologue. From then on he participated in the Yiddish periodical from America and in 1918 in the publishing house of Max Meyzel in New York out of a collection of his skits and stories known as "Veltn un tseyten".

Sh. often published in "Fraye arbeter shtime (Free Worker's Voice)", where he composed his translations of Heinrich Heine's "Oykhut", his own one-acter "Children" (15 June 1923) and his five-act drama "Vegen fun liebe" ((9 July to 27 August 1926).

Sh. passed away in New York.

• "Lexicon of Yiddish Literature", Vilna, 1929, Vol. IV, pp. 739-741.