In 1887 we find B. as a character-comic in London, wherein he arived together with Adler and Tabachnikoff, but B. Did not remain in London for long; together with Tabachnikoff and Anna Held, they traveled to Paris to act in Yiddish theatre, and from there B. and Tabachnikoff went to Lemberg to Gimpel. From there Adler brought him to America, where B. Soon became very popular.

Bessie Thomashefsky portrays B.'s first performance in New York as such:

The play "Shulamis" had been performed. I had seen nothing extraordinary. My own Absalom, my husband, that is, was more important to me than the new Absalom, but "Tsingetang," Bernstein, was new to me. ... Bernstein could give a dance, an improvement on the stage after all.

The public became tremendously excited. Bernstein soon became a New York darling. People ran into the Union Theatre to see "Berele hop." They applauded him vigorously and always demanded that he should jump over the jumping (or springboard (?)."

He was entirely unique. Tall and skinny, with a bass voice, nothing like we were accustomed to from a comic, and long legs. Concerning his legs, he wore mismatched leggings in the theatre cafe. People would say that when Bernstein wished it, he could make them as long as they were, and that when he wanted, he could make them entirely shorter and could act like a small, young woman. Mostly, he need only will it."

According to B. Botwinick, "Sometimes B. used to dance to the beat with sideburns or a glued-on beard, and he used to do it with his original grace.

However much of an effort B. made to be serious, the audience laughed all the more, because in his effort to be serious, he inserted comedy. For a certain time, he was with Kessler, acting in a serious role in the play 'Shabse zvi," and outside of that, as an intrigue, to stick someone with a knife, the audience gasped with laughter.

B. was not any kind of a painter of characters, no artistic, literary actor, who portrays a soulful experience of man. He was a first-class burlesque comic with many charms, and thus he played a great role in the first years of Yiddish theatre, when the burlesque comic was one of the important elements on the Yiddish stage."

In America, B. was for many years connected with Thomashefsky, in whose outstanding operettas he had acted in, but at the same time B. also had participate in many dramas and lebensbilds of the American dramatists, such as Libin, et al., and he was especially popular through the play "Shamay" in Gordin's "Kenig lir (The Yiddish King Lear)" with Adler.

B. was one of the four partners (Sophia Karp, Bernstein, Finkel and Louis Gottlieb), who had bought the Grand Theatre in New York, the first theatre that was directly built as a Yiddish theatre in America.

B. become a ruined man because his kind [art] of comedy no longer occupied any important place in Yiddish theatre, and besides that, B. suffered from a hoarseness, and could no longer singing with pure clarity.

In 1921 B. took, together with Sigmund Weintraub a small theatre in Chicago, but he had no luck; the theatre closed in mid-season. B. then went away into a hospital to be operated on, and they discovered that he had cancer, and on 29 August 1922 B. passed away in New York.

B. had two sons who were connected with the English stage as musicians and performers.

M. E. from Bernstein's brother, Kh. Feinstein, Max Rosenthal and Reuben Weissman.
 

• B. Gorin -- "History of Yiddish Theatre," Vol. II, pp. 126, 143, 150-151.

• Bessie Thomashefsky -- "Mayn lebens geshikhte (My Life Story)," pp. 206, 262.

• B. Botwinick -- Berl bernstein, der berihmter aktyor, velkher iz nekhten geshtorben, "Forward," 31 August 1922.

• Boris Thomashefsky -- "Der ersht farshtorbener komiker berl bernstein, "Forward," 3 September 1922.