Arnold Chaim de Porada Rapaport, son of David and Karolina (born Herz) was born on 15 July 1840 in Tarnów. He was a city councillor of Kraków from 1872 to 1881, a member of Parliament from 1876 to 1907 and a member of the State Council from 1879 to 1907 and was involved in several charities. He was a lawyer, an industrialist and a philanthropist.

He graduated from the Św. Anna school in Kraków (1858) and in the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University (1862) and defended his doctoral thesis in 1863. He worked as a lawyer in Kraków and Vienna from 1870.

He wanted that the Jewish Community of Kraków support Polish autonomy when Poland was not independent. He had influence in important circles and fought against ritual murder propaganda and against the onslaught of pogroms in Russia.

He died on 14 february 1907 in Vienna and is buried in the Jewish part of the Zentralfriedhof in that city. He left, in his testament, 400,000 crowns to the poor Jews of Galicia and 200,000 crowns for the Jewish Community in Kraków (100,000 crowns were then about 50,000 US dollars).