Chaim Grade, the son of Shlomo Mordecai Grade, a Hebrew teacher and "maskil" (advocate of the Haskalah, the European Jewish Enlightenment), received a secular as well as Jewish religious education. He studied for several years with Reb Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, the Chazon Ish (1878–1953), one of observant Judaism's great Torah scholars. In 1932, Grade began publishing stories and poems in Yiddish, and in the early 1930s was among the founding members of the "Young Vilna" experimental group of artists and writers. He developed a reputation as one of the city's most articulate literary interpreters.