ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Jewish community is mourning after Isak Haleva, chief rabbi since 2002, died at 84 on Tuesday.
Haleva was the 35th person to hold the title of Hahambaşi, by which the chief rabbis of both the modern Turkish Republic and the Ottoman empire have been known since the position was established after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul – then Constantinople – in 1453.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of our esteemed elder, our Chief Rabbi Rav Isak Haleva, who always believed in the unifying power of peace and love and who led our community in line with this belief for many years,” the Turkish Jewish community said in a statement.
Haleva served as the leading avatar of Turkish Jewry to the country’s Muslim majority during a period of transition in Turkey. A year after his election, he led the community through its first major trial of the 21st century, the 2003 bombing of two Turkish synagogues by Al-Qaeda.
Elected the same year that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took power, Haleva also presided over a diminished community as Turkey went from an ally to Israel to one of its staunchest critics. Since October 2023, Turkey has endorsed Hamas and cut off trade with Israel in response to the war in Gaza.
Erdogan called the lay leadership of the Turkish Jewish community to express his condolences, the office of the Turkish presidency announced.
“During his duty, Rav Haleva, with his warm and constructive personality, established personal friendships with both our president and many statesmen who visited our country,” the Turkish Jewish community said in a statement. Haleva was present when President Barack Obama visited the country in 2009 and when Pope Francis did in 2014. He also met with Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad when he met with Erdogan in Istanbul in 2008.
“I, as a religious official, do not involve myself in political matters. The prime minister of Turkey summoned me, so I came,” Haleva later told an Israeli news outlet about the meeting, adding that he encouraged Assad to make peace with Israel.
Officials from the United States and Israel who had developed relationships with Haleva said he would be missed.
“During my many meetings with Chief Rabbi Haleva as Consul General, I have been inspired by his messages of our shared humanity,” said Julie Eadeh, the United States’s consul general in Istanbul. “His leadership and dedication to the Jewish community will be remembered and cherished. Our condolences go out to his family, friends, and all those whose lives he touched.”
“He will be remembered as a great leader and educator; he not only led the ancient Jewish community in Turkey, but also advocated for dialogue and friendship between people of different faiths, especially between Jews and Muslims,” Israel’s president Isaac Herzog said on X. “While Chief Rabbi Rav Haleva’s voice will be greatly missed, his legacy will serve as a guiding light for future generations.”
US President Barack Obama meets with Chief Rabbi of Turkey Isak Haleva April 7, 2009, in Istanbul. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Haleva’s son Naftali, also a rabbi and a candidate to replace him, said he had received condolences from a diverse set of people.
“Because of his characteristic personality, he touched everyone’s heart,” Naftali Haleva said in an interview. “In these past two days I’m getting that message from everyone who calls, Jews and non-Jews, locally and internationally.”
Indeed, for Turkey’s Jews, both at home and abroad, he is remembered as a fatherly figure who had a zest for life and Sephardic Judaism.
“I lost not only our chief rabbi, but also my spiritual father,” Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, the president of Turkey’s organized Jewish community, said on X.
“Rabbi Haleva gained the love and appreciation of the entire community, young and old, everyone was able to speak to him in a fatherly manner,” said Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, Chabad’s emissary in Istanbul who had known Haleva for over 20 years.
Haleva’s influence also stretched far outside of his native country to reach Turkey’s Sephardic diaspora in America and Israel.
“I would say that the hahambaşi represented the best in our Sephardic tradition and the ideal rabbi, what a true Sephardic haham, in all reading of the word, should be,” said Ethan Marcus, the managing director of the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America. “His light-heartedness, his deep sense of wisdom and commitment to Ladino and the Sephardic tradition and his warmth — there was a certain real joie de vivre, you know, love of life, that he had – which were very unique monikers of Ottoman Sephardic rabbis that unfortunately, With his passing, goes with him.”
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak, a Turkish-born Jew and scholar of Israel-Turkey relations at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center, said Haleva represented a bygone era.
“The Jewish community in Turkey is currently a small community. We could also call it a big family,” Yanarocak said. “Unfortunately, I feel as though we have lost a beloved grandfather in our family. Rabbi Haleva was kind-hearted, warm, and one of us with his ever-smiling face. He filled the position he held with wisdom, but at the same time, sitting next to him felt like sitting next to not just a chief rabbi but also a family member. His passing truly marks the end of an era for this community.”
For the many Turkish Jews who, like Yanarocak, have emigrated to Israel, Haleva remained an important figure in their lives.
“We all grew up under his knees – in the synagogue, the Jewish high school, his presence was felt very much,” Yanarocak said.
Born in 1940, Haleva lived through the tumultuous latter half of the 20th century, during which Turkey’s Jewish population declined from nearly 100,000 to around 15,000 today.
Many Jews left in the middle of the century following events targeting non-Muslim minorities, including the infamous 1942 wealth tax and 1955 Istanbul pogrom. Later, economic and political instability in the 1970s and 1980s led to a slow trickle of departures further depleting the community.
Haleva, too, spent time in Israel, receiving his rabbinic ordination from the Porat Yosef Yeshiva there in the 1960s. There he learned from leading rabbis including Ovadya Yosef, Yaakov Ades, and Ben Zion Abba Shaul.
“For the 20th and 21st century, these were the most prominent Sephardic rabbis for the entire universe,” Naftali Haleva said. “These were the teachers he had.”
But Haleva soon returned to Turkey to complete his Turkish military service. As chief rabbi, he held tightly to that Turkish identity even as Spanish and Portuguese citizenship became available to Sephardic Jewry, telling JR, “I’m a Turkish Jew, period,” during a visit to Portugal in 2016.
Though Haleva was born at a time when Ladino was the common language of most of Istanbul’s Jews, he was the first chief rabbi to begin giving sermons in Turkish, recognizing the changing reality of Turkey’s Jews.
“He was in many ways a connector generation,” Marcus said. “He was born into a world where Ladino was the lingua franca, albeit diminishing in use. He was born into a world where the idea of being Sephardic was that ethos of warmth and love and being steeped in one’s traditions and halacha but also fully engaged in the wider world and its challenges. It’s something he was fully immersed in.”
“That’s something that’s now hard pressed to find, and losing him is really losing one of those last connections to that world that we’re trying to uphold and preserve,” Marcus added.
Later this year, Turkey’s Jewish community will hold an election between Turkey’s other rabbis – one of whom is Haleva’s son – to decide his successor. The community uniquely allows all adult Jews to cast ballots in rabbinic elections.
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