The Angel family traces its origins back to medieval Spain. A Maestre Angel slaughtered kasher meat for conversos in Ciudad Real in the early 1480s. Following the expulsion of 1492, the Angel family was centered in Salonica and then spread to other communities throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond. Some members went by the Hebrew surname Malakh or Malakhi (from Heb. mal’akh, angel). In the sixteenth century, Mordecai Angel was a rabbi in Rome. Because he was tall, handsome, and graceful, people referred to him as galante; this appellation was eventually adopted as a family surname—Gala…