He was born in Russia, the youngest of the six children of Yiddish author Sholom Aleichem, whose most famous character Tevye the Milkman gave the blueprint for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. The pen-name 'Raeben' is probably derived from his family-name 'Rabinowitz'.
His students include Bob Dylan, Bernice Sokol Kramer, Carolyn Schlam, Andrew Gottlieb, Janet Cohn, John Smith, Diana Postel, Loris Lerner and Rosalyn Jacobs. Raeben's mission was to teach the art of painting through intuition and feeling, instead of through intellection and conceptualization. During the seventies, his impressionistic lessons ran counter to the then prevalent conceptualism of contemporary mainstream art. Bob Dylan was mystified, at first, by Norman's didactic insistence on perceptual honesty, i.e., on not exaggerating the truth of what was seen, when first learning the basics of drawing.
"Bob", Norman said, "look at that round coffee table." "Now, tell me how you would paint it."
He died in the evening of December 12, 1978 of a heart attack in the lobby of his apartment.
