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Jacob ben Zerahiah Morali (also Morʿali or Marʿeli, d. 1806) was a rabbi and jurist ( dayyan) and one of the most prominent spiritual leaders in the city of Algiers at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth. His rabbinic responsibilities hurled him into the midst of the social and spiritual tumult Algerian Jewry was undergoing at the time. The lines between the  religious leadership and secular leadership (Ar. muqaddam ) were blurred, nepotism and injustice were rampant, and the polarization of the community forced rabbis to identify themselv…

David ben Moses ha-Kohen Scali (Sqalī) was born during the Ten Days of Repentance in 1861 in Debdou, Morocco, a city whose description as a city of priests ( kohanim) he linked to its origin in the Spanish city of Seville. He died in Oran, Algeria, in 1949. Scali ascribed great importance to his priestly ancestry and diligently detailed his descent from the priestly families of ancient Israel. As did members of other families in the Sephardi diaspora, Scali indicated his priestly status by attaching the word kohen (priest) to his surname (e.g., Kohen-al-Ḥaddād, Kohen-Ṭawīl, Kohen-…

Colette Béatrice Aboulker-Muscat (1909–2005), a member of Algeria’s famous Aboulker family, was a physician, thinker, and natural healer. Born in Algiers on January 28, 1909, she was the daughter of Henri Samuel Aboulker (1876–1957), a noted neurosurgeon and Jewish communal leader. In 1927, she and her parents visited Jerusalem for the first time and met with Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865–1935), who had been a close friend of Samuel Abū ʾl-Khayr (Aboulker), her great-grandfather.In 1954 Colette Aboulker settled permanently in Israel with her second husband, Aryeh Mu…