BRAUDE, JACOB

BRAUDE, JACOB (1902–1977), Anglo-Jewish communal leader, educationalist, and philanthropist. Braude was born in Fuerth, Bavaria, where his parents settled upon leaving Russia. He studied law at Leipzig University and received a doctorate summa-cum-laude for a thesis on Anglo-Saxon Common Law. When the legal profession was closed to Jews under the Nazi regime, he entered his father-in-law's business. In his student days Braude became active in youth work and represented the Orthodox (Ezra) movement in the Jewish Youth Center established by the community as a result of his efforts. In 1938 he emigrated to London, where he became involved in communal work. He established, with other European refugees, the Hendon Adath Yisrael Congregation which was to become one of the leading Orthodox synagogues in London and of which Braude eventually became a life president. He also took an active part in the Jewish secondary school movement, established by Rabbi Dr. Victor *Schonfeld and developed by his son Solomon.

Braude served as a member of the Executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, in which he organized the Orthodox group. He became a vice president of the World Jewish Congress (British Section), and served several times as chairman of the Mizrachi Federation and later as its executive vice-president. His regular reports on the state of Jewish education in Britain and elsewhere in the Jewish world, which were published in the Jewish Chronicle, were recognized as a reliable and valuable source of communal information. Braude also served on the Congress Tribunal of the World Zionist Organization. From 1952 he took an increasing interest in Midrashiat Noam, the pioneering yeshivah college at Pardes Ḥannah, and later in its preparatory school at Kiryat Yaakov Herzog, Kfar Saba. He founded the Friends of the Midrashia in Britain, of which he was chairman, and subsequently chaired its World Council as well as its Israeli branch.

[Alexander Carlebach]