Jacob Rombro (October 10, 1858 – November 28, 1922), better known by his pen name Philip Krantz, was a Russian-born Jewish-American socialist, newspaper editor, and Yiddish writer.
Krantz was born on October 10, 1858, in Zhuprany, Vilna Governorate, Russia, the son of Baruch Rombro and Bella Rosa Uger.
He also began writing for other Russian magazines during that time, including Russki Evrey, Voskhod, and Kievskaya Zarya, became active in spreading his social democracy ideals among the Jewish working classes, and was a founder of the Jewish Arbeiter Verein, an active center of socialism for workers and students who emigrated form Czarist Russia.
He moved to London in 1883 and began writing for Morris Winchevsky's Yiddish weekly socialist journal Der Poylisher Yidl.
[1] In 1890, Krantz accepted an invitation from New York Jewish socialists to edit a social-democratic paper and immigrated to America.
He was also the first editor of the Zukunft, which was started by American Jewish socialists in 1892, and contributed to the monthlies Neuer Geist and Neue Zeit.
He edited the last issues of Di Naye Tsayt (The New Times) in 1898 and 1899, and in 1900 contributed to the weekly Der Sotsyal-Demokrat (The Social Democrat).
His books included a survey of astronomy, a history of the French Revolution, a history of socialism, a description of pre-Columbian America, an analysis of the Exodus from Egypt,[7] a method for studying English, and a series of biographies on Aristotle, Bar Kokhba, Josephus Flavius, Muhammad, Don Isaac Abarbanel, Baruch Spinoza, Sabbatai Zevi, Lessing and Mendelssohn, the Rothschilds, and Meyerbeer.