Rachel Béhar Stein, an outstanding principal in the Alliance Israélite Universelle educational network, was born in Jerusalem in 1859 during the Ottoman period. Her father was an itinerant rabbi with a mystical bent; her mother was a descendant of the eighteenth-century kabbalist Isaac Luria of Safed.

Along with her brother Nissim (1848–1930) and her sister Fortunée (Fortuna; 1860–1929), she was one of the first Sephardi students to enroll in the teacher-training program of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. In 1872, Rachel Béhar and her sister began their studies at the Institut B…