Joseph Landau

Origins and early life

Joseph Landau was a French Orthodox Jewish community leader of the twentieth century, and the founder and president of the synagogue of the rue Pavée, in the Marais, in the fourth arrondissement of Paris.

Work and career

The dates of his birth and his death are not recorded in the available sources, but his life can be followed through his works. He left for the United States in 1870 with his brother and came back to Paris in 1876 without the fortune they had gone to seek; the two men then specialised in supplying military uniforms for the armies of Africa. He presided over the Agoudas Hakehilos, the union of Orthodox congregations formed by the Jewish immigrants who had come to Paris from eastern Europe, and it was for that union that the synagogue was raised.

He worked with Grand Rabbi Joel Leib HaLevi Herzog and with the Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard, who drew the building erected in 1913; it is the only synagogue Guimard ever built and it is now a listed French historic monument. Landau put more than seven thousand francs of his own money into the work, and the Archives israélites recorded that the synagogue had not cost the Jewish population of Paris a single sou. Prayers are still said there today.