by Abraham Littman) and performed the works of Peretz Hirschbein, Henrik Ibsen and Henri Bernstein, and subsequently did a nine-month tour with the Folksbiene in Los Angeles. During this time he also performed for the Jewish Workers' Committee and for the Histadrut. In 1945, Ben's second son Jack Bonus was born. He would go on to play as a session musician in the "Grateful Dead" scene. In 1946 Ben founded his own troupe, the "Yiddish Mobile Theater". The group was successful and toured over seventy cities. He then returned to New York City and started acting in Vaudeville theatre there, including in Israel Rosenberg's theater on Clinton Street. In 1949 he became a member of the Yiddish Actors' Union. In that year he also met his future second wife, Mina Bern, while performing together in a show called "Shalom, Tel Aviv". They would end up performing and creating shows together for decades to come. Bonus would divorce his first wife Pepie in 1951 and remarry in 1952. In 1952 he became co-manager of the National Yiddish Vaudeville Theatre in New York City with Henrietta Jacobson and Abraham Littman. In the late 1950s, he toured with an artist group funded by the Farbad-Labor Zionist Order, which included Bonus and Mina Bern, Lily Lilliano, Leon Liebgold and the pianist S. Fershko. The troupe continued to tour into the 1960s and a later version added the comedian Shmulik Goldstein and the pianist Paula Kadison. The group toured South America for a number of years as the Farband Players, visiting Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela. It was only in 1964 that Bonus returned to New York City and started performing there regularly again. In 1966 he established a Yiddish language theater in the Borough Park Theater in Brooklyn. That same year he performed on Broadway with "Let's Sing Yiddish", a revue of various songs by Itsik Manger, Mordecai Gebirtig, Morris Rosenfeld and others, staged by Mina Bern. The following year he performed his act "Sing, Israel, Sing". In 1970 he performed "Light, Lively and Yiddish" on Broadway. Bonus died unexpectedly on the street in Miami on April 6, 1984. Discography Songs of Our People (Tikva Records T-23) (1950s?) Ben Bonus Sings Israeli Songs in Yiddish - Sing Israel Sing! (Tikva Records T-125) (1960s?) Sing main Folk (Famous Records FAM-1017) (1960s?) Once Upon A Town - Cavalcade of Life in the Shtetl