While studying, he became an adherent of the
Haskalah. In 1887, he moved to
Ekaterinoslav and became a preacher (
Maggid). In 1891, he moved to
Odessa, where he became involved in the early Zionist movement and attracted the attention of Hebrew writer and Zionist leader
Moshe Leib Lilienblum. With Lilienblum's encouragement, he devoted himself entirely to preaching and became the traveling agent for
Hovevei Zion, spending the next three years preaching Zionism all over Russia to the Jewish masses to great success. The Russian government became suspicious of him and he was forced to flee for England in 1894. After he left Russia, he undertook a lecture tour across Central and Western Europe. In 1895, Masliansky immigrated to America and was received as a foremost Yiddish and Hebrew orator. In 1898, he began weekly lectures in the
Educational Alliance auditorium in
New York City. He contributed to the Hebrew periodicals ''Ha-'Ibri
and Ha-Pisgah''. In 1902, he became founder, president, and co-editor of
Die Yiddishe Velt (The Jewish World), a Jewish daily published in Yiddish and English that he gave a Zionist orientation. The paper was financially backed by
Louis Marshall and other German Jews and reflected their interests in Americanizing the immigrants and enlisting them in their anti-
Tammany reform policies. The
Lower East Side readers found the paper condescending and, due to the paper's poor reception, the sponsors withdrew their support in 1904. The paper folded in 1905, with Masliansky losing his personal funds in the process. He remained a frequent contributor to Yiddish and Hebrew periodicals and journals, and in 1921 his travel diary of his journey to
Palestine appeared in the
Jewish Morning Journal. Three volumes of his speeches were published in Yiddish in 1921. His memoirs were published in Yiddish in 1924 and in Hebrew in 1929. Masliansky was vice-president of the Federation of American Zionists from 1900 to 1910 and president of the New York Section of the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society of
Denver from 1915 to 1920. In 1915, he was elected to the
American Jewish Congress. Although he was
Orthodox, he had a unique willingness to cooperate with
Reform and secular Jews in Jewish communal activities. From 1910 to 1922, he served on the executive committee of the Kehillah of New York City. He was a charter member of the
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America in 1898 and the Jewish Ministers Association of America in 1916. He was also a director of the Israel Matz Foundation since its founding in 1925 and head of the Yeshivah of
Boro Park in
Brooklyn from 1929 until his death. ==Personal life==