In the years of "taḥ ve-tat" (1648–49) he lived at Shcherbreshin, Poland, an honored member of the community, from where he escaped, on its invasion by the Cossacks, to Krakow. There he published his "Tzok ha-Ittim" (1650), an eyewitness account, in Hebrew verse, of Jewish persecution during the Cossack uprising. This book was afterward published by Joshua ben David of Lemberg under his own name; Moritz Steinschneider was the first to discover this plagiarism.