Rubin was born in
Johannesburg, South Africa on 13 May 1932. He attended the
Jeppe High School for Boys and received private instruction in the
fine arts. Instructed in the
classical clarinet as a teenager, he developed a fascination with
jazz and began playing at the Skyline Night Club at eighteen. Enrolled as an architecture student at the
University of the Witwatersrand, he completed his professional studies after further education in London. Rubin's creative endeavours in South African society during the 1950s and 1960s dissented against the
apartheid-era
Afrikaner establishment by defying the country's racist social norms. Rubin organised his own jazz group in the 1950s, snuck into
black townships, and played alongside black musicians. Rubin's visual artwork was first exhibited in 1956. The work contained the inscription "I forgive you O Lord, for you know not what you do" – a sardonically reversed
"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do" – and depicted the naked figure with a slight hint of an
erection. The controversial image was put on display alongside other anti-establishment works at a Johannesburg gallery in 1962. The exhibition caused such furore that the government sent
the police to shut down the exhibition and referred its artwork for an examination by its censorship board. Rubin became the second South African to be charged with
blasphemy. The proceeds raised from an August 1987 exhibition and auction of art by Rubin and other Israeli artists at the
Meimad Gallery in Tel Aviv were donated to a fund for educational activities and promotion of the values of democracy and freedom of speech dedicated to
Emil Grunzweig, an Israeli teacher and
Peace Now activist murdered in 1983 by a grenade thrown at a Jerusalem peace rally. Rubin's drawings and paintings have been exhibited in Israel, South Africa, the United States, and Germany since the 1960s. Rubin returned to playing jazz in late 1979, having previously given up performance for more than a decade after his emigration from Africa. He became a founding member of the 1980s
Zaviot jazz quartet, which recorded albums with the label
Jazzis Records and performed at festivals and clubs in Israel and Europe until its break-up in 1989. Rubin's more recent appearances have included performances with
Ariel Shibolet,
Assif Tsahar,
Daniel Sarid,
Maya Dunietz, and
Yoni Silver. Awarded the
Landau Award in tribute to his contributions to jazz music in 2008, he continued to play jazz with musicians of the younger generations in Tel Aviv. His family included two sons from his first marriage, as well as one daughter and two stepdaughters from his second. Rubin was an avowed
atheist. ==References==