He earned a scholarship at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau where he received his rabbinic ordination.
In 1890, Drachman began serving as rabbi in the Park East Synagogue, where he led for the next fifty-five years.
Drachman was president of the Orthodox Union and professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
He translated Samson Raphael Hirsch's The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel into English.
This was ironic as the works of Zecharias Frankel of Breslau, a man Drachman considered an important Orthodox leader had been condemned by Hirsch as heretical.