Solomon Rubin - Life

Life

He was educated for the rabbinate, but, being attracted by Haskalah and modern learning, he entered upon a business career which lasted about five years. This proving unsuccessful, he went to Lemberg, where he studied bookkeeping at a technical institute, and also acquired a knowledge of German, French and Italian. After serving two years in the Austrian army he attempted to establish himself in Lemberg as a teacher; but persecution due to his liberal views made his position untenable, and he went to Romania, at that time a very favorable field for active and enterprising Galician Jews. He secured a good position in a commercial establishment in Galaţi, which enabled him to devote his evenings to his favorite studies.

In 1859 Rubin returned to Galicia and became principal of a school for Jewish boys in Bolechow. He went to Russia in 1863, where he was engaged as a private tutor in a wealthy Jewish family of Ostrog, Volhynia, with which he went to Vienna in 1865. There he met Peter Smolenskin, who was then in despair owing to the difficulty of continuing the publication of Ha-Shaḥar. Rubin promised him to write a complete work for that publication every year; and he kept his promise even after his personal relations with Smolenskin had become somewhat strained.

The years 1870 and 1871 were spent by Rubin as a private tutor in Naples, Italy, and from 1873 to 1878 he lived in the same capacity in the household of Jacob Poliakov in Taganrog, Russia. He then returned to Vienna, whence in 1895 he removed to Kraków.

Read more about this topic:  Solomon Rubin

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    You seem to have no real purpose in life and won’t realize at the age of twenty-two that for a man life means work, and hard work if you mean to succeed.
    Jennie Jerome Churchill (1854–1921)

    There is probably not more than one hundred dollars in cash in circulation today. That is, if you were to call in all the bills and silver and gold in the country at noon tomorrow and pile them on the table, you would find that you had just about one hundred dollars, with perhaps several Canadian pennies and a few peppermint Life Savers.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    Thy fate is the common fate of all;
    Into each life some rain must fall.
    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)