Born in Aïn Témouchent, Algeria, into a family of Spanish-Jewish scholars and rabbis, he studied law and rabbinics in Paris, fought in the French Resistance and served as a judge in Algeria, before joining René Cassin at the Alliance Israélite Universelle.
Settling in Jerusalem in 1958, he advised David Ben-Gurion, served as Deputy Mayor alongside Teddy Kollek, and founded interfaith committees uniting Jews, Christians and Muslims. His translations of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur'an — the scriptures of all three Abrahamic faiths, by a single translator — remain his best-known legacy.