DRACH, DAVID PAUL. - Hebraist, b. in Strasbourg on 16 March 1791, d. in Rome in Jan. 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 was an instructor at Rappoltsweiler, then at Colmar. In 1808 he was in Paris, where he received the title of rabbi; there, moved by the example of certain Catholic families that he had occasion to frequent, through long and rigorous studies, above all on the Fathers of the Church and the Septuagint, he converted. He was baptized on Holy Saturday of 1823, together with two daughters and a son; and this conversion of his yielded many others. In 1827 he came to Rome, where he remained librarian of Propaganda until his death.
D., in order to carry out a work of apostolate among his former coreligionists, wrote Les lettres d'un rabbin converti aux Israélites, ses frères (Paris 1825), and the brothers Libermann (v.) declared themselves indebted to D. for their conversion. A convinced supporter of the inspiration of the sacred books, he vindicated their traditional interpretation. He edited the 5th ed. of the Bible de Vence (27 vols., ibid. 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 vocabulary and added to it a Hebrew-Chaldaic dictionary of his own (Migne ed., Paris 1848).
His son PAUL-AUGUSTE, b. in Paris in 1821 and d. there in 1895, studied at Propaganda (Rome). A priest in 1846, then canon of Notre-Dame, he promoted the extensive commentary La Sainte Bible of the publisher Lethielleux (Paris 1869, ff.), in which he published Épitres de St Paul (1871), Épitres catholiques (1873), Apocalypse (1879).
Bibliography7 works
Eugenio Zolli