Born in Budapest in 1937, he just managed to gain admittance into the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest in 1956, when the failure of the Hungarian uprising expelled him to France as a refugee. From 1957 to 1961 he lived the life of a peripatetic student marked by stints at the University of Strasbourg, the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes, the École des Hautes Études, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the University of Vienna, as well as schools in Finland, England, and Italy This exploratory period ended in the fall of 1961, when Robert emigrated to Israel and entered the Hebrew University as a graduate student. After a year's service in the Israeli army, he completed his interrupted education there by earning an M.A. in linguistics (Semitic languages) in 1964.