Jacob Rodrigues Pereire

Jacob Rodrigues Pereire: First teacher of deaf-mutes in France; born at Berlanga, Spain, April 11, 1715; died at Paris Sept. 15, 1780. His father, Abraham Rodrigues Pereira, and his mother had been obliged to profess Christianity, and Jacob himself was baptized with the name of Francisco Antonio Rodrigues, which he later signed to certain pamphlets in Spain. After his father's death his mother fled with her son from Portugal to escape the charge that she had relapsed into heresy, and about 1741 she settled at Bordeaux. After ten years of study of anatomy and physiology and numerous experiments on congenital deaf-mutes, Pereire received on Jan. 19, 1747, the first testimonial for his labors from the Royal Academy of Belles-Lettres of Caen. In 1749 he set forth his system in a memoir before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. In the following year Louis XV. granted him 800 pounds as a mark of esteem. A memoir read before the Academy on an arithmetical machine which he had invented brought him a pension of 800 pounds annually from the king (Oct. 26, 1751), while in 1753 he received honorable mention at a conference held by the Academy to determine the most advantageous methods of supplementing the action of the wind on large sailing vessels. In 1760 the Royal Society of London made Pereire a member, and in 1765 he was appointed royal interpreter for Spanish and Portuguese. On Nov. 5 of the following year he married his kinswoman Miryan Lopes Dias.

His foreign birth, his Jewish faith, and a certain timidity of character, however, all conspired against Pereire, and the sharp competition to which he was exposed compelled him to yield to his rival, Abbé Charles Michel de l'Epée, in whose favor the council passed a decree (Nov. 21, 1778) which placed the school of deaf-mutes, founded by the abbé, under the protection of Louis XVI.

Throughout his life Pereire was devoted to the welfare of the Jews of southern France, Portugal, and Spain. From the year 1749 he voluntarily acted as agent for the Portuguese Jews at Paris, although this title was not officially bestowed upon him until 1761. It was through him that Jews from Portugal first received the right to settle in France (1777). In 1876 Pereire's remains were transferred from the Cimetière de la Villette (where he had been buried the very year in which that cemetery was opened) to that of Montmartre.

Bibliography: Dictionnaire Encyclopédique for 1764 and 1765; Hément, Jacob-Rodrigues Pereire, Paris, 1875; La Rochelle, Jacob-Rodrigues Pereire, ib. 1882.

Victor Perera devotes a chapter to this branch of the Pereire family in his fascinating book The Cross and the Pear Tree: a Sephardic Journey. Chapter VI: The French Pereiras.

Edouard Seguin (1847): Jacob Rodrigues Pereire: Notice sur sa vie et ses travaux.

Robert J. Fynne (1924): Montessori and her Inspirers. (Opening chapter devoted to Jacob Pereire).

GEDCOM Note

Jacob Rodrigues-pereire qui s'était fait une grande réputation comme instituteur des sourds-muets, et qui remplissait avec la plus grande distinction les fonctions, créées pour lui, d'agent à paris de la nation portugaise et espagnole de Bordeaux et Bayonne, présenta ses observationssur les réclamations des Avignonais, et s'opposa à ce qu'ils obtinssent les droits de police, deboucherie et de boulangerie qu'ils réclamaient. Son mémoire adressé à M. de Saint Florentin, eut un plein succès.