Daniel Neufeld was born in the town of Praszka near Wieluń. In his hometown, he attended a Jewish religious school, and was then educated at a grammar school run by the Piarist Order in Wieluń. The kindness of his teachers and good relations with his classmates resulting in friendship were not without influence on his views on Polish-Jewish relations, as he recalled years later.

In his professional and social work, Neufeld devoted himself to promoting the idea of assimilation of Jews into Polish society. He believed that Jews should be given equal rights as long as they shared the norms and values of Polish culture. At the same time, he wanted them to retain their distinctiveness, but only in the religious sphere.

In 1838, Neufeld opened a school for boys in Praszka. Although it retained a religious character, but unlike traditional cheders, it was also supposed to acquaint pupils with the current general knowledge. Emphasis was placed on learning modern foreign languages. After two years, he became director of a school in Częstochowa, also operating in the trend of so-called progressive Judaism. He headed this institution for as many as 20 years.

In view of the opportunities which the so-called “post-Sevastopol thaw” in the Russian partition created for social activity, including journalism, Neufeld moved to Warsaw, where he founded the periodical “The Dawn” in 1861. It was a periodical journal promoting a programme of advanced Jewish assimilation, as well as the ideas of the so-called Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah. The magazine was closed in 1863 by the Russian authorities, who were averse to Polish-Jewish integration, and Neufeld was sentenced to exile in Chelyabinsk in the Urals, from where he returned after two years.

Daniel Neufeld was a collaborating author on Samuel Orgelbrand’s encyclopaedia, and he also translated Jewish religious texts and prayer books into Polish.

He died in 1874 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw.