(1852-1915)
Polish Yiddish and Hebrew poet and author. He was born in Zamosc. Educated in the Eastern European religious tradition he also came into contact with modern learning. He practised law and lived in Warsaw, where he was an employee in the Jewish Communal Bureau. He began writing at an early age, and eventually decided to use Yiddish as a means of making literary material available to the Jewish masses. He was a master of the Yiddish short story, in which he depicted the misery and virtues of Polish Jewry. He also wrote romantic and symbolic stories based on Jewish legend and mysticism, mystic dramas and poetry, and edited a number of literary compila-tions.
Dictionary of Jewish Biography. Dan Cohn-Sherbok.