DRACH, DAVID PAUL. — Hebraist, born in Strasbourg on 16 March 1791, died in Rome in January 1865. Son of a well-known rabbi and Talmudist, at the age of 12 he attended the Talmudic school of Edenfor and then that of Bischheim. At 16 he became an instructor at Rappoltsweiler, and then at Colmar. In 1808 he was in Paris, where he received the title of rabbi; there, moved by the example of some Catholic families whom he had occasion to frequent, and after long and rigorous study, especially of the Fathers of the Church and the Septuagint, he converted. He was baptized on Holy Saturday in 1823, together with two daughters and a son; and his conversion led to many others. In 1827 he came to Rome, where he remained librarian of Propaganda until his death.
D., in order to carry out an apostolate among his former coreligionists, wrote Les lettres d'un rabbin converti aux Israélites, ses frères (Paris 1825), brothers (v.) declared themselves indebted to D. for their conversion. A convinced supporter of the inspiration of the sacred books, he upheld their traditional interpretation. He edited the 5th edition of the Bible de Vence (27 vols., there 1827–33). He also wrote: Du divorce dans la synagogue (Rome 1840); Harmonie entre l'église et la synagogue (Paris 1844); La Cabale des Hébreux (Rome 1864). He revised Gesenius’s Hebrew-Latin dictionary and added to it a Hebrew-Chaldean dictionary of his own (Migne ed., Paris 1848).
His son PAUL-AUGUSTE, born in Paris in 1821 and died there in 1895, studied at Propaganda (Rome). Ordained a priest in 1846, and later canon of Notre-Dame, he promoted the extensive commentary La Sainte Bible by the publisher Lethielleux (Paris 1869 ff.), in which he published Épitres de St Paul (1871), Épitres catholiques (1873), and Apocalypse (1879).