Kaufman was born in 1883, in Austria or Germany.Kaufmans in the 1920 US census in Newark, New Jersey As a young man, he worked as a reporter for the Berliner Morgen-Zeitung. He immigrated to Detroit, Michigan, in 1905. He met and married Fannie Newman in Detroit on March 14, 1909, and had four children: Theodore Newman Kaufman, Herbert Kaufman, Julian Kaufman, and Leonard Kaufman. He became a citizen in 1910.
