Jacques Altaras was born Jacomo Bartolomeo in Aleppo on December 8, 1786.  He was descended from a family of Spanish rabbis that had settled in Venice in the seventeenth century and then in Aleppo in the first quarter of the eighteenth century, where they joined the Francos community. In 1805 the family moved to Marseilles, where Jacques Altaras became a wealthy merchant and shipbuilder. An important communal leader, he was elected vice-president of the Jewish community of Marseilles in 1835, and president in 1849. He was associated with the reorga…