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Born on 6 May 1866 in
Yevye, Vilna region, Polish Lithuania. Father -- from a
rabbinic family, a scholar, lived as a shopkeeper, then
became a melamed. Learned in a cheder and at age
eight wrote Hebrew songs. He learned in a Nowogrod
yeshiva, then in Kovno's Beit Hamedrash. Under the
influenced of Lilienblum's "Ha'tot ne'urim", he began
sto strive toward educate himself as a poor student in
various towns. He concealed his learning of Russian and
German and read Haskalah books. For a certain time he
was a melamed of a yeshuv, and also was a
Hebrew teacher in Vilna and other Litvak cities. Later
he became a khoyv-tsion. In 1887 he immigrated to
America, where he took the name Merison. He worked for
the first months as a jacket sewer in a factory, and
then he went to English and Hebrew students. In 1892 he
became a medical doctor at Columbia University and has
practiced since then as a doctor in New York.
As one of the leaders of the
Jewish Anarchist Movement in America, His literary
activity in Yiddish began as a close contributor and
member of the editorial collegium in "Di varhayt"
(1899), and later he became very active as one of the
first writers in Yiddish in the field of philosophy,
sociology, physiology and pedagogy.
Under the pseudonym of A.
Yam, Y. translated Ibsen's dramas "Hedda Gabler"
(publisher Mayzel and Co., N.Y., 1910), and "Di froy fun
yam" [both plays were issued through the Mayzel
Publishing House in 1926 in Ibsen's "Gezamlte verk"].
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