He is the author of about 50 realist novels and short stories depicting the life of ordinary people, workers, artisans, and Jewish families in his time.

During his teenage years, he met writer Yitskhok Yoyel Linetski and playwright Avrom Goldfadn, considered to be the father of Yiddish theater, and got involved with literature of the contemporary Haskalah movement (also called Jewish Enlightenment), which promoted a renewal of the Hebrew language but also a new interest in rationalism, enquiry, and secular culture.

[1] He started writing relatively young: his first work, Roman On a Nomen (Novel without a Title), appeared in installments in the St. Petersburg-based newspaper Yidishes Folksblat[2] in 1883 when he was 24 years old.

[3] The following year he published his breakthrough work, a novel of Zionist inspiration entitled Der Yidisher Muzhik (The Jewish Farmer, 1884) which advocated for a return to the ancestral lands.

The collection also includes Spector's longest but unfinished historical novel Baal Shem-Tov, which pushed the boundaries of typical Haskalah literature and cast an innovative and positive light onto the beginnings of Hassidism.

[6] As World War I began and the German army started marching on Warsaw, Spector moved to Odessa (1914) where he continued his literary work, which made him famous all across Europe.

[6] In 1920, Spector and his second wife escaped Ukraine and travelled through Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, Switzerland, and France to make their way to a ferry to the United States.