[1] Benjamin attended the Jews' Free School, then headed by Moses Angel, as well as its Talmud Torah under Myer D. Davis and Rabbi George J. Emanuel.
[1] After he was certified a teacher with the endorsement of Matthew Arnold and Peter le Page Renouf, he became a member and examiner of the Tonic Sol-fa College in London.
[6] In 1882, he went to America and was elected rabbi of K. K. Benai Israel in Cincinnati, Ohio, replacing the deceased Dr. Max Lilienthal.
He wrote Guide to the Jewish Religion (which won the Isaac Cohen Prize in 1884), and in 1885, he published A Confirmation Class-Book.
He became a member of the Manhattan Chess Club and secretary of the ninth district of the Charity Organization Society after moving to New York.
[3] He was also chairman of the Board of Inspectors of the Young Men's Hebrew Association and a member of the National Geographic Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the Jewish Home for the Aged.