Edmond Fleg (1874–1963)

Edmond Fleg was born Edmond Flegenheimer to a Jewish family in Geneva, Switzerland. His parents were Maurice Flegenheimer, a prosperous merchant, and his wife Clara Nordmann. He attended gymnasium in Geneva, then in 1892 went to study in Paris, first at the Sorbonne and then at the École Normale Supérieure. In 1899, he qualified as a teacher of the German language, but switched careers to become a playwright and theater critic. He wrote several successful plays, including Le Message (1904), La Bête (1910), and Le Trouble-fête (1913), as well as French versions of Goethe's Faust (1937) and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (1938). He also wrote the libretti for Ernest Bloch's opera Macbeth (1910) and Georges Enesco's Oedipus (1936). Fleg became more and more conscious of his Jewish identity with the turmoil in France caused by the Dreyfus Affair and the pogroms in Eastern Europe. He attended the first three Zionist Congresses in Basel and was influenced by fellow author Israel Zangwill. Fleg became a highly prolific writer and editor of works on Jewish history and thought such as the influential volume of essays Anthologie juive des origines à nos jours (The Jewish Anthology). In 1928, he published his lengthy essay Pourquoi je suis juif (Why I Am a Jew). His work was interrupted by World War I, during which he served in the French Foreign Legion. He is perhaps best remembered today for his monumental verse cycle Ecoute Israël, published between 1913 and 1948.
He also wrote biographies based on his deep knowledge of Torah such as Moïse raconté par les Sages (The Life of Moses, 1928) and Salomon (The Life of Solomon, 1929). Other works, including Ma Palestine (The Land of Promise, 1932) and Nous de l'Esperance (1949), were collected in Vers le Monde qui vient (1960). He also translated books and stories by Scholem Aleichem, the Passover Haggadah, and selections from Moses Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed and from the Zohar.