Flora Sassoon

Flora Sassoon was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Her father was a Baghdadi businessman, and her mother was the granddaughter, from his first wife, of David Sassoon (1792–1864), the patriarch of a vastly wealthy trading family with company offices in Bombay, Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, and more. Flora was taught at a Catholic school and tutored by Jewish scholars brought from Baghdad. She was highly educated, knew six languages, and was very knowledgeable about Jewish sources. In 1876, Flora married Solomon Sassoon, the youngest son of her great-grandfather, David Sassoon, from his second marriage, and they had three children. During this period, she was known for supporting a cholera vaccine campaign and for her work in the anti-purdah movement. At the time of their marriage, her husband Solomon had returned from China to Bombay to run the central office of David Sassoon & Co, and when he died in 1894, she took over his work and ran, very successfully, the Bombay office of the Sassoon company until 1900, when she was driven out. The following year Flora moved to England, where she focused on philanthropy, entertaining, and her own scholarship, writing several articles, including one on Rashi and another on the number thirteen in Jewish tradition. She supported many yeshivot across the world and corresponded with the Ben Ish Ḥai. She died in London, and in 1947 her body was reburied in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives in Israel.