Political figure. In his youth he was influenced by Zionist ideas and joined the Zionist-Socialist workers' party SSRP ("Territorialists"). In 1918–19 he was a member of the Ukrainian Central "Rada" (council). Later he moved to Petrograd. He was a member of Evsektsia and an executive of Idgezkom (the name is an abbreviation of the Yiddish for "Jewish Public Committee"). In 1921–23, with the aim of raising funds for Russian Jews afflicted by pogroms and hunger, he travelled illegally to the USA under the name "Mikhailov". In the mid-1920s he was a consultant on Jewish affairs of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee. In the summer of 1936 he was obliged to go on behalf of Komzet to Lithuania and Poland in order to recruit settlers for the Jewish Autonomous Region; however, this journey was simply a pretext for his arrest by the NKVD. He was shot on 16 September 1938.