Born on 2 February 1911 in Radomsk, Poland. Father -- worker on a farm, where through an accidental wound he died from this work in September 1915.

He learned in a cheder, in a Polish folkshul and Yiddish in an evening school in Warsaw, where the family had moved to.

Still in his early youth he learned tailoring, which became his calling, but always he dreamed of becoming an actor and "staged" male characters.

The first production that R. saw was the "Dybbuk" offering by the "Vilna Troupe', which made him an immense impression on him, which only increased his desire for the theatre. Then he saw an entire production in Yiddish, Polish and Russian and took to studying about theatre, actor, regisseur and stenographer, and he began to perform with recitations.

During the Second World War, he was rescued in the Soviet Union and evacuated to Tomsk, and when the Leningrad Theatrical Institute was evacuated there too, and advertised for students of theatre in the theatrical faculty, R. not hearing the Russian language, the license exam discouraged him  and he then enrolled in the school in 1946 in Moscow, where he moved over to.

Here he also acted in small episodic roles, and he participated in sporadic Russian and Yiddish productions.