R. was born in 1892 in Berislov, Kherson Gubernia, Ukraine to poor parents. In his autobiography he wrote that his father was a tepetsirer, a great amateur of the Yiddish theatre, and under the influence of Avraham Goldfaden's first production, he presented plays, which were classified as a children's production of "Shulamit", and he, a ten-year-old, was given to act in the role of "Absalom". From then on, he learned in "the city school already not geklebt, and his father had given him to an optician to study as a provisioner, but he did not enter into this as he was continuously drawn to singing and thus he went into the Yiddish theatre and with aiz bey zey nit geven with the cantor Yeshaya Zayatz, later with other cantors, until he performed in the arriving Yiddish theatre troupe of Mishurat.

R. took to traveling with the troupe, where he was already acting in roles, but due to the fact that their performances were hindered, he returned home from time to time and acted with amateurs, until there came an opportunity to act with a professional troupe, and thus he came to participate in the troupes of Genfer, Sabsey, and in 1916 with Clara Young in Moscow and Petrograd, and after the Revolution, in troupes set up through the Russian-Yiddish Artists Union with Moshe Lipman as the leader/conductor, then two years with Rudolph Zaslavsky. In 1920 he performed in Kiev's "Kunst-vinkl", in 1925 he went into the troupe of Clara Young. In 1926 he traveled to Argentina where he acted for six months at the Excelsior Theatre. Then he returned to Kiev to act in the local Yiddish theatre, where he also visited other cities..