Israel Isidor Elyashev

He introduced the world to the works of the great contemporary Yiddish classical writers: Sholem Rabinovich, better known as Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Mocher Sefarim, Isaac Leib Peretz and Nachum Sokolov; along with modern Hebrew writers including Chaim Nachman Bialik, and Sholem Asch, among several others.

In his youth, he studied with Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv at the Talmud Torah in Grobiņa, Latvia, but was eventually expelled from the school for his "heretical tendencies.

"[1] He went on to attend a high school in Switzerland, and he then studied medicine and biology in Heidelberg and Berlin.

Elyashev's pen name was Bal-Makhshoves (Hebrew: בעל מחשבות), meaning "Master [of] Thoughts" or "The Thinker".

He participated in the First Zionist Congress, held in Basel, Switzerland in August 1897, as a delegate from Germany .