SAMUEL (SHMUEL) TORNBERG

SAMUEL (SHMUEL) TORNBERG (1872-October 5, 1911)

            He was born in Lodz, Poland.  At the age of seventeen, he moved to the United States.  In 1895 he became an actor in the Yiddish theater.  For a long time he wrote stories for Yudisher herald (Jewish herald) in New York (1890) and Forverts (Forward) in New York, in which he also published translations of Mark Twain’s works.  He dramatized Balzac’s Dos shpil fun spekulatsye (The game of speculation] and translated “Rip van vinkl oder di sheydim fun di ketskil mauntayns” (Rip Van Winkle or the ghosts of the Catskill Mountains), by Washington Irving, which was staged on November 4, 1906.  He left in manuscript a one-act play, Foter un zun (Father and son), and a historical operetta in five acts and ten scenes: Don yitskhok abarbanel (Don Isaac Abarbanel).  He died in New York.

Source: Z. Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934).

Yankev Kahan