Naftali Herz Imber was born in Złoczów (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), a city in Galicia, which then was part of the Austrian Empire.

[2] He began writing poetry at the age of 10 and several years later received an award from Emperor Franz Joseph for a poem on the centenary of Bukovina's joining to the Austrian Empire.

[3] His brother, Shmaryahu Imber, also became a writer and a local teacher, and his son, Naftali's nephew Shmuel Yankev, became a Yiddish language poet.

[10] Additionally, he published Treasures of Two Worlds: Unpublished Legends and Traditions of the Jewish Nation (1910), which posited that the Tabernacle carried by the Hebrews during their 40 years in the desert contained an electrical generator, and that King Solomon invented the telephone.

[11] Imber died penniless in New York City on October 8, 1909 from the effects of chronic alcoholism, nonetheless beloved by the local Jewish community.