M. was born in 1880 in Borisov, Minsk Gubernia, White Russia. His father was a storekeeper. He learned in the yeshivas of Berezin and Mir, and he was an extern and he received an a certificate as a home teacher.

In his early youth he participated later in Minsk as a Bundist in the struggle against the "Zubatovtses" and settled then in Vilna, where he dedicated himself to societal matters and cultural work, and is the co-founder and teacher of he first Yiddish evening school, co-organizer of the first illegal Yiddish teachers conference (after which he was arrested together with Israel Lichtenstein), and he is the cofounder of the Yiddish "Kinder-farzorgungs-gezelshaft", where he staged children's plays and children's excursions. Here he also became interested in physical education, and after completing a course of children's gymnastics (in 1913 he went to Germany and Scandinavia), he became a gymnastics teacher. M. also was a member of "Maccabee", worked on Yiddish terminology for gymnastics and directed gymnastics in a Talmud Torah and early school. At the same time M. was the manager of the Hebrew girl's school "Yehudit".

After the outbreak of the World War, M. traveled around as a "Yepoka" representative [working] in the interest of the refugees, in southern Russia, and in August 1915 he returned to Vilna as the secretary of an aid committee for war refugees in Vilna.