André Chouraqui

André Chouraqui was born in 1917 in Aïn Témouchent

Chouraqui was born in 1917 in Aïn Témouchent, Algeria, the youngest of 9 children of Isaac Chouraqui and Meleha Meyer. Both sides of his family came from Jewish lines of rabbis and scholars in North Africa going back to the 16th century. From age 6 he suffered from polio, which left lasting damage to his left leg.

He finished high school in Oran and studied law at the Sorbonne in Paris, along with Hebrew and Aramaic at the rabbinical seminary of France. He joined the French bar in 1939 but was expelled a year later under the antisemitic laws of the Vichy regime. He earned a doctorate in law from the University of Paris in 1948.

After the war he worked as a lawyer and judge in Algeria. From 1947 he held senior posts at the Alliance Israélite Universelle and lectured on Judaism around the world. He settled in Jerusalem in 1958 and advised Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on the integration of immigrants from 1959 to 1963.

In 1965 he was elected Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem under Teddy Kollek, in charge of culture and interfaith relations. He translated the Bible, the New Testament and the Quran into French, and his books were translated into 21 languages. He was active in dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims and died in Jerusalem in 2007.