Born on 22 April 1894 in Goldingen, Courland. Father -- a merchant. Until age nine he learned in a semi-modernized cheder, then in the gymnasium of Courland's adel", and left the fifth class due to the anti-Semitic spirit of the lordly institute. 1908 was spent in Vilna, where he learned Hebrew privately. In 1912 he matriculated in Peterburg. 1913-17 -- learned in a philological-historical facultat of Peterburg's university. Since 1919 he studied Germanics in Marburg, and in 1923 he received his doctorate.

W. began his literary activity with correspondences in "Di hofnung", and soon became one of the more active Jewish journalists, translators and editors.

W. dedicated himself especially to the Yiddish philology, for the purpose of the great world library in Europe and America, and is one of the main founders of the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in Vilna.W. issued "All of the Writings of Dr. Shlomo Ettinger", after the manuscript, with a biographic and bibliographic introduction and with notes (publisher B. A. Kletskin, Vilna, 1925), translated under the pseudonym Sore Brener, Ernst Toller's drama "Mase mentsh" (publisher "Di velt", Warsaw, 1922), and "Der iberker" (Yiddish Culture publisher, Berlin 1923), translated from the original Greek a section of Sophocles' "Oedipus the King" (600 lines of 1600). A part Some of them were published in "Tsukunft", March 1921, and 150 lines were reprinted in Sh. Bastomski's and M. Chaimson's reader, "Dos nayer vort", Vilna, 1926), wrote many historiographical articles