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ernstein, sid
Add. Bibliography: Y. Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah,
the Organized Escape of Jewish Survivors of Eastern Europe (1970);
T.P. Liebschutz, “Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein and the Jewish Displaced
Persons,” Rabbinic Thesis, HUC-JIR (1965).
[Malcolm H. Stern / Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)]
BERNSTEIN, SID (1918– ), U.S. music promoter, agent, and
manager; most famous for bringing the Beatles to the United
States in 1964. Bernstein was born in New York City, the only
child and adopted son of Israel and Ida Bernstein, Russian immigrants
who came from Lukshivka, a village near Kiev. His
parents called Bernstein by his Hebrew name, Simcha. His career
already showed promise in high school, when he landed
a fellow student a spot on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, a
popular radio program in the 1930s and 1940s.
After serving as a soldier in France in World War II,
Bernstein’s show business career started in the Catskill summers
of the early 1950s, working as activities director at the
Brown’s Hotel. Bernstein produced musical shows in New
York at the Paramount, the Palace, the Brooklyn Paramount,
and the Apollo, and the comeback tour for Judy Garland, but
went broke promoting the Newport Jazz Festival in 1961. Bernstein
suggested to Tony Bennett that he perform at Carnegie
Hall, a performance that was instrumental in boosting Bennett’s
singing career. In early 1963, reading about a group called
the Beatles and the hysteria they were causing in England, he
called their manager, Brian *Epstein, to arrange for them to
perform in America, and on February 12, 1964, the esteemed
Carnegie Hall hosted its first-ever rock concert. On August 15,
1965, Bernstein promoted the Beatles concert at sold-out Shea
Stadium in New York, the largest crowd (55,000) for which
the Beatles ever played and the first rock concert ever held in
a sports stadium. It changed the face of the music business,
and Bernstein himself.
Bernstein’s instinctive vision was evident throughout
the era of rock and roll’s “British Invasion,” when he brought
over to the United States other English bands like the Rolling
Stones, Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Animals, Manfred
Mann, Herman’s Hermits, and the Moody Blues. Bernstein
also helped promote the careers of James Brown, Ray
Charles, John Denver, Joan Baez, Miles Davis, Tito Puente,
Muddy Waters, Ella Fitzgerald, Frankie Valli, and Frank Sinatra,
and was the personal manager of the Rock Hall of Fame
group The Young Rascals. But it was for his promotional work
with the Beatles that Bernstein will always be remembered.
“You know, Sid, at Shea Stadium I saw the top of the mountain,”
John Lennon once told him. “You know John, so did I,”
answered Bernstein.
[Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)]
BERNSTEIN, SIDNEY LEWIS, BARON (1899–1993), British
television pioneer and publisher. Born in Ilford, Essex, Bernstein
inherited his interest in show business from his father,
Alexander Bernstein (d. 1921), who owned a group of cinemas.
Sidney Bernstein was a founder of the Film Society in 1924,
and started his Granada chain of cinemas at Dover in 1930.
During World War II he was film adviser to the British Ministry
of Information (1940–45) and chief of the film section,
SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force;
1943–45). Bernstein introduced additional entertainments
into his cinemas, including art exhibitions, and established
links with Hollywood. However, his most important interest
eventually became the Granada group of television companies
operating mainly from Manchester. Bernstein had seen
the possibilities of television in 1948 but could not obtain a
license until the British Television Act of 1954. The Granada
companies made many endowments to universities. He and
his brother, Cecil Bernstein (a fellow director), gave £300,000
in 1965 for the establishment of a Northern Arts and Sciences
Foundation. After 1961 he acquired a substantial interest in the
publishing companies of Rupert Hart-Davis, McGibbon and
Kee, and several others. A Labour supporter, he was awarded
a life peerage in 1969.
Add. Bibliography: C. Moorehead, Sidney Bernstein: A Biography
(1984); J. Tinker, Television Barons (1980); ODNB online.
[John M. Shaftesley]
BERNSTEIN, SIMON (1884–1962), journalist and Hebrew
scholar. Bernstein was born in Latvia. From 1908 to 1911 he
was Hebrew secretary of the Society for Spreading Enlightenment
Among the Jews of Russia. In 1912 he joined the staff of
the World Zionist Organization, being attached to the head
office in Berlin until 1915, to the Copenhagen Bureau 1915–20,
and to the London office 1921–22. In 1922 he settled in the
United States, becoming editor of Dos Yiddishe Folk, organ of
the Zionist Organization of America. He held this post until
1953. Bernstein was a prolific writer. Apart from his newspaper
articles and Zionist pamphlets, he devoted himself to scholarly
research, especially in the field of Hebrew poetry. He brought
to light unpublished piyyutim of Spanish, Italian, and Byzantine
poets; altogether he published over 3,000 such poems.
Bernstein’s major books are Be-Ḥazon ha-Dorot (1928), a volume
of Hebrew essays; editions of Divan Rav Immanuel ben
David Frances (1932); Divan Yehudah Aryeh mi-Modena (1932);
Shirei Yehudah ha-Levi (1944), selected liturgical and secular
poems; Divan Shelomo Da Piera (1942); Al Naharot Sefarad
(1956), lamentations in the Sephardi rite on the destruction of
Jerusalem and other calamities; and Shirei ha-Kodesh (1957),
the collected liturgical poetry of Moses ibn Ezra.
Bibliography: J. Modlinger, Simon Bernstein (1949); M.
Glenn, in: Or ha-Mizraḥ, 11 (April 1963), 40–42; A. Ben Ezra, ibid.,
43–44; M. Schmelzer, in: Hadoar, 42 (1963), 195.
BERNSTEIN, THEODORE M. (1904–1979), U.S. editor
and author. Born in New York, Bernstein joined the New
York Times in 1925, became foreign-news editor, and in 1952
assistant managing editor. He was a founding editor of the
newspaper’s international edition in Paris. He taught at the
Columbia School of Journalism, and wrote on English usage
in such books as Watch Your Language (1958), Headlines and
484 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3