JOFFRIN, JULES FRANÇOIS ALEXANDRE (1846-1890), French politician, was born at Troyes on the 16th of March 1846. He served in the Franco-German War, was involved in the Commune, and spent eleven years in England as a political exile. He attached himself to the “possibilist” group of the socialist party, the section opposed to the root-and-branch measures of Jules Guesde. He became a member of the municipal council of Paris in 1882, and vice-president in 1888-1889. Violently attacked by the Boulangist organs, L’Intransigeant and La France, he won a suit against them for libel, and in 1889 he contested the 18th arrondissement of Paris with General Boulanger, who obtained a majority of over 2000 votes, but was declared ineligible. Joffrin was only admitted to the Chamber after a heated discussion, and continued to be attacked by the nationalists. He died in Paris on the 17th of September 1890.
JOGUES, ISAAC (1607-1646), French missionary in North America, was born at Orleans on the 10th of January 1607. He entered the Society of Jesus at Rouen in 1624, and in 1636 was ordained and sent, by his own wish, to the Huron mission. In 1639 he went among the Tobacco Nation, and in 1641 journeyed to Sault Sainte Marie, where he preached to the Algonquins. Returning from an expedition to Three Rivers he was captured by Mohawks, who tortured him and kept him as a slave until the summer of 1643, when, aided by some Dutchmen, he escaped to the manor of Rensselaerwyck and thence to New Amsterdam. After a brief visit to France, where he was treated with high honour, he returned to the Mohawk country in May 1646 and ratified a treaty between that tribe and the Canadian government. Working among them as the founder of the Mission of the Martyrs, he incurred their enmity, was tortured as a sorcerer, and finally killed at Ossernenon, near Auriesville, N.Y.
See Parkman, The Jesuits in North America (1898).
JOḤANAN BEN ZACCAI, Palestinian rabbi, contemporary of the Apostles. He was a disciple of Hillel (q.v.), and after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by Titus was the main instrument in the preservation of the Jewish religion. During the last decades of the Temple Joḥanan was a member of the Sanhedrin and a skilled controversialist against the Sadducees. He is also reported to have been head of a great school in the capital. In the war with Rome he belonged to the peace party, and finding that the Zealots were resolved on carrying their revolt to its inevitable sequel, Joḥanan had himself conveyed out of Jerusalem in a coffin. In the Roman camp the rabbi was courteously received, and Vespasian (whose future elevation to the imperial dignity Joḥanan, like Josephus, is said to have foretold) agreed to grant him any boon he desired. Joḥanan obtained permission to found a college at Jamnia (Jabneh), which became the centre of Jewish culture. It practically exercised the judicial functions of the Sanhedrin (see [Jews], § 40 ad fin.). That chief literary expression of Pharisaism, the Mishnah, was the outcome of the work begun at Jamnia. Joḥanan solaced his disciples on the fall of the Temple by the double thought that charity could replace sacrifice, and that a life devoted to the religious law could form a fitting continuation of the old theocratic state. “Joḥanan felt the fall of his people more deeply than anyone else, but—and in this lies his historical importance—he did more than any one else to prepare the way for Israel to rise again” (Bacher).
See Graetz, History of the Jews (Eng. trans.), vol. ii. ch. xiii.; Weiss, Dor dor ve-doreshav, ii. 36; Bacher, Die Agada der Tannaiten, vol. i. ch. iii.
(I. A.)