L. was born in 1889 in Tukkum, Latvia. He learned in a cheder, then with his uncle, the Tukkum rabbi, and completed a six-class progymnasium. Seeing several Yiddish productions in Tukkum, he developed a strong desire for the stage and his success came with the Sam Adler-Spivakovski troupe in Riga. After several attempts with "amateur" circles in Vilna, he entered into Bergstein's troupe as a prompter and soon switched over to acting roles. In 1908 he acted with Sabsey in Riga, then he went away to Vilna, then he studied in a Russian dramatic school and acted in Russian theatre.

In 1910 he acted with Fishzon, then went on a tour with Sharavner across Kovno Gubernia and joined up with Lipovski in Bobruisk, 1913 -- he acted with Lipovski in Vilna and was the first to act as "Tudrus" in Peretz Hirsbein's "A farvorfener vinkl" under the direction of the author. In the summer of the same year L. acted with Julius Adler-Lipovski in Lodz's Circus, and he participated in the first "Hamlet" production on the Yiddish stage in Europe.

In 1915 he toured with various Yiddish troupes across Russia, during the ban on acting in Yiddish, he joined the troupes, which performed Yiddish repertoire translated into Russian. In 1916 he acted and directed in Baku, Astrakhan, Nizhniy Novgorod and Samara.

In 1917 he was in Oriol, 1918 -- in Homel, 1919 -- in Poltava in the dramatic troupe of "Narobraz" ([folksbildung]).