He came from Odessa to America with the members of the thirty party "Am Olam" [circa 1882] and participated in the first Yiddish productions in New York with Boris Thomashefsky.

According to Boris Thomashefsky he wrote him, he:
"was [with his first performance] a young, crafty, brave, lively, friendly man, not long out of the Russian university. He was a hibsher student, a hnvdiker, with a large head of kutsherave hair. The large artistic head had soon shown that he wasn't any gevynlekher bshr-udt. Somewhat the gehoybene type, that varfn zikh in the eyes -- a sculptor, a painter, an actor, a professor, not any ordinary man."

In the old country S. was a socialist, and because of that he had to leave Russia. As to the Yiddish theatre, together with his wife Betty he came up with the idea of starting on the Yiddish stage and his performing the translated repertory and plays of Yiddish writers. Disappointed in these prospects, he withdrew from the stage and became a worker with shirts and later a manager for Singer Sewing Machines.

.S.'s son is married to a sister of actor Joseph Shoengold.
 

• B. Gorin -- History of Yiddish Theatre, Vol. II, pp. 17, 24.

• Boris Thomashefsky -- Amalige aktyoren vos volten nokh velen khotsh eynmol oyftreten in theater, "Forward," New York, 25 August 1923.