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Avraham Elmaleh Avraham Elmaleh (1876–1967) was a prolific scholar, essayist, linguist, translator , editor, ethnographer, historian, and journalist. He was also a Sephardic leader and politician in Jerusalem. Elmaleh received an extensive rabbinic education, first at the Mugrabi Talmud Torah of Rabbi Yehouda Kastil in the Old City of Jerusalem, and later at Yeshiva Doresh Tsiyyon and Yeshiva Tiferet Yisrael. He also attended the Jerusalemite Alliance school and later the ­ Jerusalem-based Ecole Biblique et Archéologique Français. Between 1902 and 1912 Elmaleh taught French at the Alliance school. A committed advocate of the use of Hebrew, Elmaleh was one of the founders of the Society of the Youth of Jerusalem, which promoted national consciousness and using Hebrew among Sephardic youth. In 1911 he was appointed secretary of the Jewish community in Damascus and principal of its community school. He returned to Palestine in 1913, briefly serving as a bank manager in Gaza and a schoolteacher in Jaffa. In 1916 Elmaleh was exiled to Damascus. During the British Mandate years, he held several official positions on the Sephardic Community Council in Jerusalem. After the founding of the State of Israel, Elmaleh was elected to the first Knesset, as a representative of the Sephardi-Edot Ha-Mizrah Party. He served on the Parliamentary Committee for Education and Culture and was awarded several honors by the French government, including officier de l’Académie Française in 1934 and officier de la Légion d’honneur in 1960. Elmaleh had a rich journalistic career for many decades. His first essay was published in 1903 in the Jerusalem newspaper Hashkafa (The outlook). In 1909 he founded the Hebrew publication Ha-Herut, and he was editor of Do’ar Hayom from 1921 to 1932. He also briefly edited Do’ar Hayom’s Arabic version , Barid alyawm. Even more impressive was Elmaleh’s scholarly career. He published over 700 scholarly works in various languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, French, and Turkish. In 1923 Elmaleh was sent by the Jewish National Fund to North Africa, and as a result he produced a series of essays on the history and ethnography of the Jewish communities of the Maghreb. After 1948 Elmaleh contributed to leading Sephardic or Mizrahi publications such as Hed Ha-Mizrah (Eastern echo), Shevet ve-‘Am (A tribe and a people), and Ba-Ma‘aracha (In the battle). In 1920 Elmaleh founded the scholarly journal Mizrah u-Ma‘arav (East and West), whose opening essay is included here. ...

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