He was famously a friend to Izi Kharik, a Yiddish poet who was killed during the Great Purge.

He was temporarily a student at the local university and studied in underground Chabad yeshivas in Russia.

He attempted to obtain permission to exit the USSR, but was refused on eleven separate occasions,[9] including after three meetings with Mikhail Kalinin.

In 1944, at the request of Meir Bar-Ilan, he moved to Jerusalem, where he joined a team of rabbis editing the Encyclopedia Talmudit with Shlomo Yosef Zevin.

[11] In 1951, he traveled on a mission to Johannesburg where he promoted Jewish education, directing a seminary for rabbis and a Midrasha.