Apotheker born in
Ponevezh,
Kovno Governorate, the son of a prominent
Maskil, Jacob Apotheker. He was orphaned at a young age, and in 1868 went to
Vilkomir to study under the guidance of
Moses Loeb Lilienblum. He later was an
auditor at
Kiev University. In 1877 Apotheker became involved in the
nihilist movement, and was arrested in
Kiev in 1879 for revolutionary activities. He fled to
Czernowitz, then the capital of
Bukovina, where he opened a book store, wrote for Hebrew and Yiddish papers, and published his first book,
Ha-Nevel ('The Harp'), containing Hebrew and Yiddish poems (1881). He emigrated to the United States in 1888, where he unsuccessfully tried to found a
communist colony. He thereafter founded a women's clothing store in
Brownsville, Brooklyn, joined the local anarchist movement, and became a prolific contributor to the Yiddish press. In 1895 he moved to Philadelphia, where he became a printer and edited
Die Gegenwart, a short-lived Yiddish weekly. He died in Brooklyn, New York on October 23, 1911. ==Family==