XXth century CE

German rabbi

American rabbi

Polish rabbi of Hasidic ancestry (1912–1998)

Israeli religious Zionist rabbi and educator

Rabbi born in Taroudant, called Baba Pinhas, Zionist activist in Marrakech, venerated as a saint.

Israeli novelist and poet born in Poland.

Polish Jewish resistance fighter

American artist

Italian writer and chemist, survivor of Auschwitz, author of If This Is a Man, a major testimony on the Holocaust. His work probes the human condition after the camps.

Israeli scholar of comparative religion, Dean of Humanities at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, biographer of Joseph Karo, EMET Prize laureate (2005), co-editor of the Encyclopedia of the Jewish…

Israeli historian, professor (Elias Sourasky Chair) of the history of Latin America and Spain at Tel-Aviv University. Author or editor of more than fifty works and numerous articles, notably on…

American rabbi

One of the rabbis of Oran. He labored greatly for the aliyah of the Jews of his city to the Land of Israel, which caused him to be imprisoned in Oran. He himself went up to Israel and settled in…

Religious-Zionist rabbi, student of Rav Moshe Zvi Neria and later close to Rav Tzvi Yehuda HaCohen Kook at the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva. He developed a method of studying the Tanakh and left a series of…

Born in Rada'a in Yemen, son of rabbi and dayan Yahya (Yehiah) Basis (1896–1977). Came to Israel as a child (1950), he studied at Ponevezh under R. E. M. M. Shach. Community rabbi in Beit Dagan…

Sage and kabbalist of Morocco, Chief Rabbi of Safi; hiloula on 2 Adar. He composed « Minha Beloula » (Casablanca, 1937), a collection of laws in Judeo-Arabic (Maghrebi), reissued in facsimile in 1997…

Orthodox rabbi, rosh yeshiva of the Maarava Machon Rubin secondary school (Matityahu, Israel) which he founded in 1984, and prolific composer of religious melodies (including 'Kol Ha'olam Kulo'). Son…

Rabbi born and raised in Iran, trained at the Rabbinical College of America and ordained (semikha). Active Torah teacher to the Persian Jewish community, he broadcasts lessons online (free,…

Rabbi of the Sephardic community of Lyon then of the moshav Bet Ouziel in Israel; founder of the bulletin « La Voix Sépharade ». A work, Les Dix Commandements, was published posthumously.

Rabbi of Djerba, printer and author; he wrote "Sefer Jerbah Yehudit" (1978), a work documenting the traditions, history and Jewish community of the island of Djerba. His family later settled in…

Dayan and moreh-tzedek in the city of Safi. He was the son-in-law of the holy gaon Rabbi Yehouda ben-Moyal, author of the book "Chevet Yehouda". His wife died on 4 Shevat 5701 (1941).

Rabbi and mohel of the Algerian Jewish community, known for an annual Hebrew calendar that he published (17th year of publication in 5704 / 1943-1944, financed by local commercial advertisements).…

Rabbi for some thirty years in Los Angeles, he is international director of the Sephardic Educational Center (Old City of Jerusalem). Columnist ("Sephardic Torah from the Holy Land", Jewish Journal),…

The most famous of the saints of the Nahmiash family (« Aït Nahmiash ») of Ouarzazate, venerated by the Jews of the region. Father of Rabbi Yossef Nahmiash who taught in Marrakech, he was of great…

Spiritual guide of the Syrian Jewish community of Flatbush (Yad Yosef Torah Center, Avenue J). Prolific author devoted to Sephardic and Aleppine heritage: his work « Aleppo: City of Scholars »…

Rabbi of Mazagan (El Jadida), where he held an almost official position as rabbi of the city (maria d'atra) and served as mesader guittin (redactor of divorce documents) under French administration.…

Rabbi in El Hamma, died in 1906. Author of a halakhic work titled « Roch Pina », published in Djerba in 1916.

Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community of New York, he directs the kollel/project Ohr Halacha, which publishes and distributes guides to daily halakha; he regularly writes halakhic columns (FAQ for…

Tanna of the third generation, grandson of a High Priest. He is credited with the thirteen hermeneutical rules (middot) that serve as introduction to the Sifra, a development of the seven rules of…

Born on Rosh Hashanah 5650 (1890), he distinguished himself from childhood by his vivacity and his diligence in Torah, was admitted at age nine to the « Hevra Rachbi » and acquired early a reputation…

Born in Gabès in 1915, he taught Torah in the yeshivot of Tunis (among his disciples, Rabbi Meïr Mazouz, founder of the Kissé Rahamim yeshiva). He died in Jerusalem in 1975. Author of several volumes…

Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn. Head of School of the Yeshivah of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School, after being Chief Rabbi of Congregation Bnei Yitzhak. Semicha of the Sephardic…

Head of the Jewish community of Gharian (Tripolitania) in 1880, he was its spiritual guide; he was also a poet and physician-surgeon. Some of his poems were collected in the works of the orientalist…

Chief Rabbi (av bet din) of Paritchi then of Minsk, son-in-law of Rabbi Eliezer Rabinowitch. Imprisoned by the GPU under Soviet antireligious repression, he left Minsk and became rabbi of Leningrad…

Born in Zagoura (south Morocco) on 22 Tammuz 5680 [1920], son of Rav Shaoul Dahan. Orphaned of his father around five years of age, he was taken by his mother to Meknès where he studied twelve years…

Rabbi of the communities of Larache, Ksar el-Kbir and Arcila in northern Morocco, and vice-president of the rabbinical court of Casablanca. After his immigration to Israel, he was Chief Rabbi…

Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish (Aleppine) community of Brooklyn, he founded in 1968 the Sephardic Institute and was long director of the Sephardic High School. Disciple of Rabbi Solomon D. Sassoon.…

Teacher of Hebrew and Arabic for two decades at the school of the Alliance israélite, he was also hazan of the Hebrat Adi Ezer congregation in Damascus (of which his brother Jacob was the spiritual…

Born in Midelt in Tevet 5660 (1900), the very month of the death of Rabbi Yaakov Abouhatsira, to charitable parents (Rabbi Moshé and Hanna), whose house was a meeting place for sages. Pupil of the…

German Orthodox rabbi and lawyer who challenged Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher in court in Berlin in 1933, emigrated to the United States in 1939, and authored 'Lies in Nazi Antisemitic…

Av beth din (president of the rabbinical court) of Fès, reputed gaon and decisor, author of several works on halakha and responsa. In 1918, Rabbi Refael Enkaoua, believing that the function of Grand…

Born in the village of Beni-Mellal in Morocco, sent to study at Schneider Yeshiva in England before his bar mitzvah, he left Morocco in 1967 and settled in Brooklyn. There he founded and directed for…

One of the great sages of Meknes, author of the work « Dvar Shmouel », printed in Casablanca in 1940.

Born in 5651 (1891) in Erfoud, in the Tafilalt, son of Rabbi Aharon, he was named Shmuel after the ancestor of the dynasty buried in Damascus, and his father designated him « Rabbi Shmuel » from…

Originally from Meknès, he served as rabbi in Tiberias then directed a yeshiva in Bné Brak. He edited the writings of Rabbi Raphaël Berdugo, one of the great masters of Meknès.

Rabbi, director of the Center for Kohanim in the Old City of Jerusalem. He wrote an accessible synthesis on the use of DNA to trace the origin and dispersion of the Jewish people (« Cohenim gene »),…

Descendant of the Ouazana lineage and elder brother of Rabbi Shaul, he served as rabbi of the village. Having gone up to Israel, he settled in Pardès Hanna and died on Rosh Hodesh Adar II 5757 (1997).

Counted among the great ancient rabbis of Yemen, he was rabbi of the synagogue « Torah and Prayer » in Tel-Aviv. His son Rabbi Shmuel Tzabari is author of works of halakhic interpretation and directs…

Last Chief Rabbi of Aleppo, he led the community before emigration. He authored the Meir Tov, a commentary on the Tanakh (including a volume on the Tehillim, first volume published in 2002).

Sage and kabbalist of the Jewish community of Libya, numbered among the historical rabbis of Tripoli documented by the Center for the Heritage of Libyan Jewry (gallery "Rabbis of Libya").

Moroccan rabbi, whose detailed entry appears under the heading Haifa. He reports, in the name of his grandfather who visited Oujda on his way to the Land of Israel, the memory of old Jews "without…

Born in Hamadan in April 1912, son of Davoud Kohan, Jewish merchant of the city. Editor-in-chief of the major newspaper Keyhan during the Second World War, founder of the magazine Kavian, prolific…

Political journalist, editor-in-chief, founder of the weekly Kavian and prolific translator of Russian and European literature into Persian. Born in Hamadan in a Jewish family (father Davoud Kohan),…

Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Hebrew College in Boston and rabbi. She is the author of several scholarly works on midrash and the Bible.

American actress, comedian

Pioneering Hebrew poetess, known simply as "Rahel," a beloved figure of the lyrical revival in the Land of Israel. Her poems were widely set to music.

actress

Biologist, partisan of the Vilna Ghetto and historian of the Shoah.

American science fiction author

Rabbi of Tétouan, 20th century. Died in 5680 of the Hebrew era (1920). Listed in Malkhei Rabbanan (Yosef Ben Naim, 1931), f. 107-4.

Israeli professional wrestler

Born in Venice in 1952, he received his semikhah from the Italian Rabbinic College in 1973 after studies at the Yeshivat Merkaz haRav and the Makhon Lifshitz in Israel. Sofer (scribe) and shohet, he…

Israeli economist, professor (Reichman University / IDC Herzliya), author of numerous academic works in finance and economics (oligopoly and futures markets, trade liberalization and domestic…

French rabbi

Spanish basketball administrator (1926-1997)

Yiddish poetess, major voice after the Shoah.

Major Marxist theorist of the New Left, reader in political science at the London School of Economics from 1949 onwards. His book Parliamentary Socialism (1961), a critique of the Labour Party, then…

American scientist, Nobel laureate in medicine

Israeli footballer

Born in 1939, fighter pilot of the Israeli Air Force, captured during the War of Attrition and held three and a half years in an Egyptian prison. With three fellow detainees, he directs there the…

Poet, translator and Israeli linguist.

Israeli rabbi, author and publisher

Born in Tunis, died in Paris. Singer and composer of Arab-Andalusian music, major figure of Tunisian song, famous notably for his 'talils' (compliments and wishes addressed to guests at…

Rabbi of Rotterdam

Beta Israel high priest

Tunisian rabbi

Polish jurist, creator of the concept of "genocide" and architect of the 1948 UN convention. He devoted his life to the criminalization of mass crimes.

Hungarian academic

French rabbi

American architect born in Rhodes in a Sephardic Jewish family. He was one of the leading figures of California's "mid-century modern" architecture, a pioneer in the use of steel and aluminum in…

Poetess, filmmaker and Israeli professor, experimental work.

Born in Sanaa, he is Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Ono and member of the Council of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Doctor of law (Tel-Aviv University) and former teacher of Mishpat Ivri at Bar-Ilan, he is…

Grand rabbi of Djerba for about twenty years, he then led the Jewish community of Djerba in Paris for his last 17 years, founding there a talmud-torah and a small yeshiva « Torah we-Raḥamim ». Keeper…

Rabbi signing under the name Moshe Tapiero, author of a text published on Harissa.com, "The Miracle and the Letter", a theological reflection on the significance of miracles (the Exodus) drawing on…

Son of Hakham Avraham Halioua, from Meknès (Morocco). He was Roch Yeshiva of the Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, having succeeded his father-in-law Rav Aharon Schechter; died in 2024 at…

Israeli singer and rapper of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, born in Petah Tikva, known by the stage name Nechi Nech. Winner of an Acum Prize (best emerging artist, 2016) and an Acum Album of the Year…

Australian-Israeli rabbi (1935–2024)

French philosopher and sociologist, liberal theorist of international relations and a leading editorialist. Author of The Opium of the Intellectuals.

Egyptian philosopher

Franco-American novelist and scholar, hidden survivor of the Shoah (family deported and murdered at Auschwitz), theorist of "surfiction".

Israeli football player

Israeli rabbi

American businesswoman

American basketball player

American basketball player

member of the Polish Jewish resistance

German woman rabbi

Jewish singer from Algeria and Judeo-Arabic culture, notable representative of houzi folklore

American physicist

Rabbi, French resistance fighter

French rabbi and Resistance fighter

Chief Rabbi of France

first Miss Iraq in history

Born in Ferrara on 17 March 1904, from an old Jewish family of the city. Opponent of fascism, he is interned at the Urbisaglia camp (1940-1941). After the Liberation he becomes commissioner then…

Italian lawyer

Israeli scholar specializing in Eastern Jewish communities (Iran, Afghanistan, the Far East) and Jerusalem institutions. Author of several documentary monographs published in Jerusalem.

American police chief

Born January 12, 1931 in Johannesburg. Assistant librarian at Rhodes University (Grahamstown), then chief librarian and professor of library science at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) from…

Israeli educator

Rabbi, scholar, religious leader (1933–2019)

Israeli politician

rabbi and Italian radiologist physician

Italian rabbi

Chief Rabbi of Rome since 2001 and director of the Italian Rabbinical College, also a radiologist physician. Descendant of three generations of rabbis, he is a recognized specialist of Toledot Yeshu,…

French actor born in Paris in a modest family; his parents were Moroccan Jews of Spanish descent. Discovered in 1983 by Tchao Pantin (César for Best Supporting Actor), then César for Best Actor in…

Born in Algeria in 1948, agrégé/graduate in Hebrew, he was a teacher of Sephardic civilization at INALCO and taught the history of North African Jews (Paris VIII) and of Jews in the contemporary era…

American physicist, Nobel Prize 1965, one of the founders of quantum electrodynamics. Famous for his diagrams and his gift as a teacher.

Born in Craiova (Romania) in a Jewish family, trained in Vienna, violist. Fleeing Austria in 1939, he settled in Sydney. In 1945 he founded Musica Viva Australia, which became the world's largest…

American rabbi

American politician

American computer scientist, Turing Award laureate (1985) for contributions to the theory of algorithms, born to a Jewish family in Boston.

American politician

American aeronautical engineer

Australian businessman (1934–2009)

American rabbi and theologian (1924–2021)

American architect and graphic designer of Jewish descent, founder of the TED conference and coiner of the term 'information architecture'.

American politician

American economist

Born in 1909 in Bucharest to a Jewish family, he converted to Christianity in 1938 and became a Lutheran pastor. Imprisoned and tortured for fourteen years by the Romanian communist regime, he is the…

Yiddish poetess, called « the poetess of Jerusalem ».

Italian neurobiologist

Israeli Yiddish poet (1925–2023)

American physicist and inventor

Robert Assaraf, born in 1936 in Rabat and died in 2018 in Israel, is a historian and businessman, former head of the ONA group. He founded in 1996 the International Center for Research on the Jews of…

Born in Port-Lyautey (Kénitra, Morocco), he joined the surrealist movement in 1948 and founded in 1950–1951 the journal « L'Âge du cinéma » with Ado Kyrou. Film critic (Positif), specialist in…

photographer and war correspondent of Hungarian origin

American biochemist and pharmacologist

American rabbi and theologian

American historian

American journalist

Born in Vienna in 1919, sound engineer (RCA Victor, Columbia) then cameraman for CBS in New York; he emigrated to the United States in the early Second World War to flee Nazi persecution, which cost…

composer and pianist

Robert Liberles (1944–2012), professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, specialist in the political, religious and social history of Jews in Germany. From a family of German…

American politician

American physicist, scientific director of the Manhattan Project and “father of the atomic bomb.” He was later cast aside during the McCarthyist witch hunt.

American neuroendocrinologist and Stanford professor, raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in Brooklyn to immigrants from the Soviet Union, known for his research on stress and popular science…

American diplomat

Austrian rabbi

American-Israeli mathematician

American political figure

American animal rights activist

Tunisian politician

French politician, senator for Hauts-de-Seine and former minister for relations with Parliament (2007-2009), vice-president of the Senate. From a Moroccan Jewish family originating from Essaouira…

Born in Tunis in 1940 to a Jewish family, French mathematician specialist in numerical analysis, nonlinear partial differential equations, and fluid mechanics. Ph.D. (1967) under J.-L. Lions;…

Author of "Le Calendrier Hébraïque", a reference work in French detailing the rules of the Jewish calendar based on Torah verses and Talmudic discussions, with astronomical exposition of the moments…

French rabbi

Israeli military commander

Born Roland Isaac Bacri in Algiers (Bab El Oued) in a Jewish family of Algeria. Columnist at Le Canard enchaîné from 1956 to 1999, he signed under the pseudonym « Roro de Bab-el-Oued » texts in…

German merchant, Holocaust survivor

Poet and novelist born in the Charâa quarter of Constantine, former contributor to Alger Républicain and close to writer Malek Haddad. His novel Berechit (Denoël, 1991) evokes the Jewish quarters of…

French writer of Lithuanian Jewish origin, aviator of the Free French, the only author to receive the Prix Goncourt twice. Author of Promise at Dawn.

American rabbi

Argentine actress, television personality and screenwriter (1974-2010)

Né en Suisse et monté en Israël à 19 ans, il fonda en 1987 Léava, organisation de séminaires destinés à faire découvrir le judaïsme au grand public francophone, ainsi que la yeshiva francophone…

Israeli journalist and academic

American rabbi

Israeli actress, screenwriter and director

Writer born in Israel to Egyptian Jewish parents. Journalist at Haaretz, professor of literature at the University of Haifa. Recipient of the Bernstein Prize (2009) for Kol Tsaadenu (« The Sound of…

American publicist

Professor of motor behavior and president of the Zinman College of Physical Education and Sport Sciences (Wingate Institute, Israel). Former basketball coach, he has published more than 150…

Poet and Israeli painter of Iraqi origin, translated into 45 languages.

Polish-German Marxist theorist and revolutionary, co-founder of the Spartacus League. She was assassinated in Berlin in January 1919.

Argentine human rights activist

British chemist and crystallographer whose diffraction images were decisive for the discovery of the structure of DNA. She came from a Jewish family in London.

Dutch microbiologist, columnist, and politician

Brazilian writer

Italian writer, journalist and poet (1931–2009)

Israeli racing driver, son of Chanoch Nissany; raced in Formula 2 and was a test/development driver in Formula 1 (Williams).

Born in Tehran into a Jewish family, she was an adolescent during the 1979 revolution and emigrated to the United States in 1985. First a poet writing in Persian, she achieved prominence in English…

Mathematician and logician, founder of recursion theory.

Czech political figure, victim of the Prague trials

United States senator for Wisconsin from 1993 to 2011

American computer scientist

Israeli novelist and short story writer, introspective prose.

British cryptoanalyst

Israeli holder of a doctorate in Talmud (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). She founded in 1989 a secular, egalitarian, and pluralistic beit midrash in Jerusalem, then in 1996 ALMA (Tel-Aviv), a center…

Canadian scholar

New Zealand politician and community volunteer (1923–2019)

British actress

German-American sex therapist, author and television producer

American actress

Rywka (Rywcia) Unglik, born in 1930, is listed as a victim of the Shoah in the central database of names of victims of the Shoah of Yad Vashem, as well as in the « Children of the Lodz Ghetto…

Italian archaeologist

Born Sabine Chwast in Warsaw, she married Miron Zlatin (a Jew originally from Russia/Belarus). Member of the OSE, she organized in 1943 the Maison d'Izieu, a refuge for Jewish children, razzia'd by…

Professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Rutgers, one of the most prolific logicians in history (more than 1,100 articles). He developed classification theory (resolution…

Algerian singer born Simon Halali in Annaba (Bône) in 1920, to a Judeo-Berber mother. An emblematic figure of Arabo-Andalusian and Judeo-Maghrebi song in Paris, he survived the Occupation thanks to…

Iraqi musician