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N. was born in 1866 in Szczerzec, by Lemberg, Eastern
Galicia, into a poor family. He was raised under the
influence of his widowed mother, a connoisseur of
Hebrew, whose children had become the breadwinners by
the application over the house of chicken, meat, etc.
From childhood on, he
manifested exceptional abilities. Already for six years
he learned Gemora, and for eight years learned by
himself in the kloyz. Later he [gehaltenerheyt]
to begin to learn German and he left his studies for
Lemberg, where he nourished himself with Hebrew lessons.
After enduring exams in an eight-class gymnasium, he
went away to Berlin, and there he studied in "Lernanshtalt
far der voysnshaft fun yudntum", and in the university,
which he graduated as a doctor of philosophy and was
accepted as a rabbi in Rakonitz (Bemen). He participated
in the first unionist congress, and after a personal
conflict with Dr. Herzl, he withdrew from from [efntlekhn]
part of the movement.
In 1908 he was invited as a
professor of Yiddish philosophy by the "Hebrew Union
College" in Cincinnati, where he remained until his
final days.
N. issued several
philosophical works in Hebrew, German and English.
In his youth, N. wrote
articles in the Yiddish publications of Galicia, and he
belonged to a circle ([that included] Adolf Shtand,
Shlomo Shiler, Yehoshua Thon, Mordechai Erenpreyz,
Shmuel Gutman, Avraham Korkis, M. Berkovitsh, I. L.
Landoy et al), which had for one of its goals to reform
the Yiddish theatre. Gutman [the current head rabbi of
Lemberg] then wrote a drama "Aleksander ferara", and N.
-- a drama "Ruth". However Avraham Golfaden (who had
then written in Lemberg), to which the group had turned
to, rejected this drama [oyftsufirn], because in the
Yiddish theatre then they had success only with
operettas and melodramas.
On 20 December 1924 N.
passed away in Cincinnati.
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