27 Shevat 5640 – February 9 1880
This portrait of Adolphe Cremieux shows the French statesman in 1856, while the French Jewish statesman, lawyer and activist was in political retirement. Having already fought for the rights of French Jews, and been responsible for legislation freeing slaves in the French colonies, he now turned his attention to the wider Jewish community. In 1860, he founded Alliance Israelite Universelle – the first organization promoting Jewish solidarity, which set up Jewish schools bringing modern education, with all its goods and evils, to Jewish communities in French colonies such as Algiers and Morocco. It was also behind the agricultural school Mikve Israel, near Jaffa, which provided essential back up for the early Jewish pioneers in Ottoman Palestine. Famously travelling with Moses Montefiore to defend the Damascus Jewish community from a blood libel in 1840, he continued to fight such accusations as they arose elsewhere.
Feel free to share
