Born on 15 September 1878 in Czernowitz, Bukovina.

His parents owned a mill in Gurahumora, where he was educated.

S. studied in a cheder and in a public school, as well as singing with a cantor.

At the age of thirteen he travelled to Pressburg in order to join a yeshiva, singing there with the cantor Kohnstat, and then went to Budapest to study with the cantor Bachman, where he also received a musical education.

There he met the Yiddish actors Philip Weisenfreund, Eskreis, Brandes, Berl Bernstein, Treitler and his daughter Malvina (who later became Lobel), with whom he traveled as a choirboy and actor over all of Galicia and other Austrian-Hungarian territories and throughout Rumania.

Because of the difficult situation faced by the Yiddish Theatre, his playing many times on the Yiddish stage was often interrupted, and he did participate in circus representations.

In 1906 he played the Yiddish vaudeville circuit with the Kaners and Litmanns in Karlsbad, and from there he was brought to America by Sam Agid for his vaudeville house.

Then he played in the legitimate theatre with Jacob Frank in Baltimore, and after that a few seasons in Chicago with Charles Nathanson and Elias Rothstein, playing big roles and as a singing actor, having the opportunity to play with the invited actors and with the most famous personalities of the Yiddish stage.

In the last years, S. participated in English plays, among them in the "Gads of Lighting"[?], with Harris Brem and Charles Pickford, and for three seasons as "Levy" in the "Jazz Singer" (with George Jessel) and in "Toirn tu di reit".

He also participated in some "talkies".

S. wrote and sung for the phonograph two hundred and eight Yiddish and English songs, some of them ("The Old Father", "The Chazzan Getting Older", "B'rith Mila") becoming very popular.
 

Sh. E.