Élie-Aristide Astruc

Élie-Aristide Astruc

Élie-Aristide Astruc (born December 12, 1831 in Bordeaux ; died February 23, 1905 in Brussels ) was a Grand Rabbi in Belgium and a rabbi in France .

Life

Astruc was the son of a Jewish merchant in Bordeaux, whose ancestors settled in the city in the 17th century. After graduating from school in Bordeaux, Élie-Aristide Astruc studied from 1852 to 1857 at the rabbinical college in Metz . He was the first Sephardic student at this rabbinical seminary founded in 1829. He then became the third deputy rabbi at the Grand Rabbi of the Consistoire Paris . From 1859 Astruc became the first rabbi of the Sephardic community on Rue Lamartine in Paris. At the same time he became a Jewish pastor at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand , at the Collège Chaptal and in the Paris prisons and hospitals.

On August 23, 1857, Élie-Aristide Astruc married his extended relative Myriam Amédée Astruc (d. 1922) in Bordeaux. This marriage resulted in three sons and a daughter, with whom their parents lived in Brussels in the last years of their lives.

In 1866 he became the Grand Rabbi of Belgium, succeeding Henri Loeb . In 1879 he resigned from this position to devote himself mainly to his literary work.

Without having applied, Astruc was elected rabbi of the Jewish community in Bayonne. He took up this position on September 13, 1887. His inauguration and the 50th anniversary of the construction of the synagogue in Bayonne took place at the same time. In 1891 he resigned from office for health reasons. He spent the last years of his life in Brussels. Astruc was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Uccle on February 26th .

Astruc was close to liberal Judaism and therefore had to fend off many hostilities. He sympathized with the work of the German journal Wissenschaft des Judentums and the pioneer of reform Judaism Abraham Geiger .

Awards

• 1879: Order of the Leopold of Belgium

literature

• Dictionnaire biographique des rabbins et autres ministres du culte israélite. France et Algérie, du Grand Sanhédrin (1807) à la loi de Séparation (1905) . Berg International Éditeurs, Paris 2007, ISBN 978-2-911289-97-2 , pp. 109-111.