Vale William Rubinstein

One of the more pleasant aspects of editing is getting to know contributors beyond the scope and focus of their submissions. Such was the case with William ‘Bill’ Rubinstein, whose mind and pen ranged over a wealth of topics in these pages, from religion’s role in society to the misrepresentation of indigenous ‘histories’ and the authorship of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. His was the fine mind of a thoroughly decent man, and now death has taken him from us.

J-wire reports:

He was born in Brooklyn on 12 August 1946, to a Warsaw-born father and an American mother whose maiden name was Rubenstein (spelled that way). His father’s parents came from Lodz, and his father’s grandfather was related to the great pianist Arthur. Rubinstein. Rubinstein had a younger brother who became a professor of anthropology. He was educated at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, and did his postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He then worked as the London-based researcher on a Lancaster University history project.

Rubinstein leaves behind a significant gap in Australian Jewish intellectual life. From the time he settled in Melbourne with his wife Hilary, he sought to improve Jewish academic research. An American social and economic historian, he immigrated to Australia together with his librarian-historian wife Dr Hilary Rubinstein, whom he met at college in the United State where she was an exchange student. They arrived in Australia in 1976.

Bill is survived by his wife, Hilary, also a Quadrant contributor, and two grandchildren.