G. was born in 19 October 1891 in Vekshnya, Kovno region, Lithuania. He is descended from chief rabbis. His grandfather was a rabbi in Ivye. His father's brother was the well-known Gaon R' Chiam Uzer Grodzenski in Vilna. His father was qualified as a rabbi, but he took up business instead. Due to an incident at birth, and through an error by a town doctor, he had to live for his entire life with a deep-tseshedikte vocal volume. As a child of three his parents took him to Vilna, where he learned in a cheder. At the age of thirteen he entered a Russian progymnasium, where he learned for four to five years. He read much, and at an early age began to write. At age seventeen he published his first song in Yiddish, and in 1910 he went away to Antwerp, where he learned to sharpen his instruments, and he became the co-founder of the local society "Kultur" and worked with various Yiddish periodicals in Western Europe.

In 1913 he returned to Vilna, where he began to contribute to the local Yiddish newspapers, issuing in 1914 his first book of songs "Eynzame klangen." During the First World War, together with his parents, he was evacuated to Yekaterinoslav, where he fell down in 1916, under a tramway and both of his legs became paralyzed. Nisht gekut deroyf, he threw himself with great energy into writing. He worked with the local Yiddish press, translating Pushkin's "Poltava" and "Yevgeni oniegin," which since 1923 was a Yiddish opera production in Vilna. He returned in 1921 to Vilna, where there he became active in the periodicals, put out a novel, a "muterlekhe gefiln," a lebenspiel in four scenes (Vilna, 1923, 49 pp.), published several translations, and since 1924 until the