As an opponent against Polish assimilation of the Jews, he established, for the 1873 elections of the Reichsrat, a Jewish-Ruthenian electoral alliance.
In 1879, he separated from the Shomer Israel and went to Vienna for the purpose of medical studies where he – together with Peretz Smolenskin – found the Jewish-political association Ahavath Zion (for the reason of colonisation of the holy land).
In 1883 he returned to Lviv where he founded the first Jewish-national association of the Austrian east, Miqra Kodesh.
But he is not the creator of this word, it was already in use, e.g. you can find in a letter of Ruben Bierer from 9 December 1888 the expression zionist brother's greeting.
The word zionist is found already in the year 1877 in a Romanian written pamphlet (annual report of the order "Zion" in Bucharest).