Zadoc Kahn

Origins and early life

Zadoc Kahn was born at Mommenheim in Alsace on 18 February 1839 and trained at the rabbinical seminary of Metz, which moved to Paris during his studies.

Work and career

He became chief rabbi of Paris and then, in 1889, chief rabbi of France, a post he held until his death, at the exact moment when French Jewry was to face the worst antisemitic campaign of the century. He founded the Société des études juives in 1879 to put Jewish scholarship in France on a scientific footing, and directed the translation of the Hebrew Bible known ever since as the Bible du rabbinat, published in 1899, which remains the standard French Jewish version.

He had officiated at the marriage of Alfred Dreyfus and Lucie Hadamard on 21 April 1890, and after the conviction he stood by the family without wavering, working for the officer's rehabilitation and answering the antisemitic press throughout the Affair. He was among the few leaders of French Jewry to give a hearing to the Hovevei Zion and to the young Zionism of Theodor Herzl, whom he received in Paris, while holding to the French republican settlement his generation had inherited. He died in Paris on 8 December 1905.