Turkey’s Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva, who led the country’s Jewish community for more than two decades, has died, Agence France-Presse reported, citing its leadership on Tuesday. He was 85.
“We are deeply saddened to have lost our esteemed leader, our Chief Rabbi Rav Isak Haleva,” the Turkish Jewish community said on X.
The İstanbul-born rabbi, who was appointed in 2002, “always believed in the unity of peace and love and led our Community in line with this belief for years,” it said.
It did not say when Haleva died.
According to biographical details published in the community’s Shalom newspaper, he was the third chief rabbi since the founding of the modern Turkish republic.
Born in İstanbul in 1940, after finishing school he went to Jerusalem where he studied to become a rabbi, it said.
He returned to İstanbul in 1961 where he taught at a Jewish high school as well as teaching Hebrew and Jewish religious culture at Marmara University and Sakarya University on the Black Sea.
In addition to Turkish, he was fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, English, French and Spanish, and could also read and speak Ladino, the traditional language of the Sephardic Jewish community which fuses Hebrew and Spanish but also incorporates elements of Turkish.
In November 2003, a double suicide bombing targeted two synagogues in İstanbul, killing 25 people and wounding hundreds, including Haleva who was slightly injured.
His tenure as chief rabbi was renewed three times and he was also active in interfaith dialogue.
Turkey’s Jewish community currently counts less than 15,000 members, having shrunk from a community of 200,000 at the start of the 20th century.
Most of them are descendants of those who sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century after fleeing or being expelled from Spain during the Inquisition.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan contacted the community to offer his condolences on the rabbi’s passing, the paper said.
In a posting on X, İstanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu offered his condolences to the community saying Haleva “always supported peace and placed great importance on dialogue and friendship.”