David Paul Drach

Origins and early life

David Drach was born on 6 March 1791 in Strasbourg, the son of a rabbi, and was raised as a Talmudist of note in the Jewish schools of Alsace, in the generation that saw Napoleon convene the Sanhedrin — he himself taught at the Jewish school of Paris and married the daughter of the chief rabbi of France.

Work and career

He figures in this directory by that Jewish birth and learning, and this fiche says plainly what came next: in 1823 he converted to Catholicism, taking the name Paul, in one of the most publicized conversions of the century, which split his family — his wife fled with the children, and the affair went before the courts. He put his Hebrew learning at the service of his new church: as a Hebraist he published works on the harmony between the Church and the Synagogue and revised the Hebrew of Catholic Bibles, and from 1832 he was librarian of the College of the Propaganda Fide in Rome, the Vatican's central institution for the missions and for oriental studies.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres drew his portrait — a measure of the notice he attracted in the intellectual and artistic Rome of his day. He died in Rome, in 1865 by some accounts and in 1868 by others.