Kalischer was born in Thorn (Toruń) in the Province of Prussia, within the Kingdom of Prussia. He studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau and the universities of Breslau and Berlin (Ph.D. 1868, his dissertation being " De Aristotelis Rhetoricis et Ethicis Nicomachæis et in Quo et Cur Inter Se quum Congruant tum Differant ", awarded a prize by the philosophical faculty of the University of Berlin).