At the age of five, Auerbach-Levy came to New York with his parents. He attended public school on the lower east side, the Townsend Harris High School, and the College of the City of New York, where he served as art editor of the Mercury, the college newspaper. Meanwhile, at the age of eleven Auerbach-Levy was admitted to the School of the National Academy of Design where he studied until 1911 when he was awarded the Mooney Traveling Scholarship. This enabled him to go to Paris, where he studied with J. P. Laurens at the Academie Julian.
In 1919, Auerbach-Levy returned to the Academy School to teach etching, filling a vacancy left by the death of Charles F. W. Mielatz, whom he had assisted when he was a student there, and remained on the Academy's faculty into 1934. He again became an Academy teacher in 1959 and continued on the faculty to his death. He also taught at the Art Students League, and at the Educational Alliance Art School on the lower east side.
Auerbach-Levy began doing caricatures of his friends at the Beachcombers Club in Provincetown, Massachusetts. A caricature of Charles W. Hawthorne won the second Lewis Prize at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1924; that same year he had an exhibition at Milch Gallery. He began drawing for the theatre section of the Sunday New York World in the early 1920s. In addition to drawing for the "Profiles" section of The New Yorker, he also illustrated for Collier's, the New York Post, and the Brooklyn Eagle. His drawing of Al Jolson, used for promotion of The Jazz Singer, 1927, brought him considerable attention.
Although Auerbach-Levy's illustrations were the source of his celebrity, he sustained his work as a painter, and was an influential teacher; among his students were Paul Cadmus, Luigi Lucioni, James E. Allen, and Emil Fuchs. In Academy annual exhibitions his painting received a Hallgarten Prize, 1921; the Issac N. Maynard Prize, 1925; and a Samuel F. B. Morse medal, 1958.
