When Rubinstein was five years old, he moved with his parents and older sister to the United States, where he grew up in the Staten Island borough of New York City.
His father, a dentist, served in the Israeli army and did not want the same for his children. His older sister also immigrated from the USSR to Israel. Rubinstein was born in Rehovot, Israel, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants from the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of then Soviet Union (now Kazakhstan).