[3] Attracted to the Haskalah, he made his first appearance as a Hebrew author at the age of fourteen in the periodical Ha-Maggid.

He briefly moved to Vienna in 1876, where he befriended editor Peretz Smolenskin, and shortly thereafter began studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau.

He left for Prostken in 1882—where he worked as a teacher of Hebrew—and returned to Minsk the following year to devote himself to Jewish literature and publishing.

During the 1890s, Zitron's articles appeared in the major Hebrew newspapers and journals, including Ha-Melitz, Ha-Shiloaḥ, and Luaḥ Aḥi’asaf.

[3] In the 1880s to 1890s, Zitron wrote short stories, one of which, Yonah Potah ('A Naïve Dove', 1887), aroused popular attention.

Notable also are his Asifat sipurim me-ḥaye bene Yisra’el ('A Collection of Stories from the Lives of Jews' 1885), a collection of short stories translated from the German and French, and Mi-Shuk ha-ḥayim ('From Life’s Marketplace', 1887).