Uri Zvi Greenberg was born in the Galician town Bilyi Kamin, in Austria-Hungary, into a prominent Hasidic family.

His experience at the fording of the Save River, where many of his comrades in arms died or were severely wounded, affected him deeply, and appeared in his future writings for years to come.

[4] Greenberg and his family miraculously escaped being shot by Polish soldiers celebrating their victory over the Ukrainians, an experience which convinced him that all Jews living in the “Kingdom of the Cross” faced physical annihilation.

He was one of the founders of Di Chaliastre (literally, "the gang"), a group of young Yiddish writers that included Melech Ravitch.

[11] In the wake of his iconoclastic depictions of Jesus in the second issue of Albatros, particularly his prose poem Royte epl fun veybeymer (Red Apples from the Trees of Pain).

The magazine incorporated avant-garde elements both in content and typography, taking its cue from German periodicals like Die Aktion and Der Sturm.

This theme is illustrated in Royte epl fun vey beymer (Red apples from the tree of pain) and Veytikn-heym af slavisher erd (Pain-Home on Slavic Ground).

With Abba Ahimeir and Yehoshua Yeivin, he founded Brit HaBirionim, a clandestine, self-declared fascist faction of the Revisionist movement which adopted an activist policy of violating British mandatory regulations.

In the early 1930s, the members of Brit Habirionim group disrupted a British-sponsored census, sounded the shofar in prayer at the Western Wall despite a British prohibition, held a protest rally when a British colonial official visited Tel Aviv, and tore down Nazi flags from German offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.