BLAUSTEIN, DAVID:
Educator; born May 5, 1866, at Lida, near Wilna, Russia. He received his first education in Hebrew in the ḥeder and yeshibah of his native town; went at the age of eighteen to Prussia, where he studied Hebrew and rabbinical literature under Israel Lipkin; subsequently, on his removal to Mecklenburg-Schwerin, he studied Jewish history and philosophy under Dr. Feilchenfeld. Being still a Russian subject, he was ordered to leave Germany, and in 1886 came to the United States and settled in Boston, where heopened a private school. He actively engaged in educational and communal work, being one of the founders of the Sheltering Home for Immigrants. About 1890 he entered Harvard University, but left it after three years to devote himself entirely to congregational work at Providence, R. I., where from 1892 to 1896 he acted as rabbi, and became a member of the executive board of the Society for Organizing Charity. In 1896 he was appointed lecturer on Semitic languages at Brown University, and in 1898 became connected with the Educational Alliance of New York, where he fills the office of superintendent. Blaustein went to study the conditions of the Rumanian Jews in the summer of 1900, visiting for this purpose Bucharest and other cities, accompanying Mr. Wachthorn, delegated by the United States government to study the Jewish question.
- Jew. Chron. Sept. 21, 1900.
