Jacques-Isaac Altaras and Joseph Cohen

Jacques-Isaac Altaras, a shipbuilder and head of the Marseilles consistory, and Joseph Cohen, a lawyer, coauthored an influential report on the “moral and political state” of Algerian Jews. Altaras and Cohen argued that Algerian Jews were sympathetic to France and capable of being “civilized” as French citizens. They advocated such emancipatory reforms as the establishment of new schools and consistories that would favor those wanting emancipation. Cohen eventually became head of the newly formed Algerian consistory and in 1860 founded La vérité israélite, a weekly journal focused on Jewish history and culture.