CRÉHANGE, ALEXANDRE

CRÉHANGE, ALEXANDRE (1791–1872), French author and communal leader. Créhange, who was strictly Orthodox in religious matters, was politically a republican and an advocate of universal suffrage. At the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution, Créhange and his Orthodox friends organized the Jewish Club Démocratique des Fidèles, with its own periodical, La Vérité. The club successfully demanded the reorganization of the jewish consistories through democratic elections. Créhange was the oldest of the ten founders of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and secretary of the Paris Consistory. He published several religious works, including an illustrated edition of the Psalms (1858). He edited two periodicals: La paix, revue religieuse, morale et littéraire (1846) and Annuaire parisien du culte israélite (1851–71). He also adapted the Ẓe'enah u-Re'nah into French under the title La Semaine israélite (2 vols., 1846). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Szajkowski, in: YIVOA, 2–3 (1947–48), 105ff.; A.E. Halphen, Recueil des lois… concernant les israélites (1851), 150; Dictionnaire de biographie française, 9 (1961), 1183.