Yankev Shternberg

In the 1910s, he published poetry in the periodicals Hamer (Brăila), Frayhayt, Arbeter Tsaytung, and Dos Naye Lebm (all in Czernowitz), as well as Gut Morgn (Odessa), Literarishe Bleter (Warsaw), and Tsayt (New York).

[1] In 1917–18, Shternberg and Jacob Botoshansky together founded a Yiddish revue theater in Bucharest, for which they wrote and produced nine short plays (revues),[2] including Tsimes (named after the traditional pureed vegetable dish tsimes), Bukaresht-Yerusholaim ("Bucharest-Jerusalem"), In mitn drinen ("All of a sudden"), Grine bleter ("Green leaves"), Kukuriku, Sholem-Aleykhem ("Hello"), and Hershele Ostropoler ("Hershele of Ostropol").

The Romanian daily newspaper Adevărul wrote on August 23, 1924, shortly after the troupe's arrival in Bucharest, that "Such a demonstration of artistry, even on a small stage such as Jigniţa and even in a language like Yiddish ought to be seen by all who are interested in superior realization of drama.

Singer's Yoshe Kalb and his own play Teater in Flamen ("Theater in Flames") on the theme of the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War.

As antisemitic, pro-fascist tendencies gained power in Bucharest, the theater left for a prolonged tour of major European cities and eventually Shternberg moved to Czernowitz, where he continued his theatrical activities.

A year later, when his native Bessarabia was annexed by the Soviet Union, he and most of his former troupe settled in Kishinev, where Shternberg became artistic director of the Yiddish-language Moldovan State Jewish Theater and staged, among other works, M. Daniel's Zyamke Kopatsh and Sholom-Aleichem's Motl Peysi Dem Khazns ("Motl Peysi, the cantor's son") with Sidi Tal in the boys' roles.

His wife, the composer Otiliya Likhtenshteyn, who set his poems and those of other Soviet Yiddish poets (first of all Leib Kvitko) to music, died the same year.