Hahambaşı

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Hahambaşı , also Chachambaschi ( Ottoman خخام باشی Chacham baschi ), is the Turkish title of the Grand Rabbi of Turkey , the head of the country's 17,600 Jews . The chief rabbi has his seat in Istanbul . Due to the history of the Ottoman Empire , the institution is considered one of the most important of its kind in the world.

The Chief Rabbi Jacob Saul Dwek, Chachambaschi of Aleppo, Vilâyet Syria , 1907.

history

The institution of Hahambaşı (the term is made up of hakham , Hebrew for wise and baschi, Turkish for main ) came into being around 1835 when the Rabbi of Istanbul Abraham Levi Pascha was appointed by the Ottoman authorities as the first chief rabbi of the Ottoman Empire and thus a similar position how the Greek and Armenian patriarch got. After the Millet system , which was created to control religious minorities, was also extended to the Jewish community, the office of Hahambaşı was created to maintain an administrative basis similar to that of the Christian minorities. The fact that the institution of Hahambaşı goes back to the time of Sultan Mehmed II , who had declared Mose Capsali as chief rabbi after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 , can be attributed to mythology. According to Bernard Lewis, there is no evidence that there was any form of chief rabbinate in the Ottoman Empire in the 15th or 16th centuries. In today's research it is assumed that there were always individual rabbis in the larger cities who held a prominent position vis-à-vis the authorities. However, one can only speak of a chief rabbinate for the entire Ottoman Empire from 1835.

The motivation for creating a new chief rabbi around 1835 was the Ottoman reform efforts for the minorities, which were deemed necessary after the loss of Greece (1832), as well as the pressure from Great Britain, which pushed for the "emancipation of the Jews".

The aim was to rule the ethnically and culturally very different subjects as far as possible according to their own laws. Since religion was seen as an important foundation of the identity of the various communities, their religious leaders were also referred to as ethnarchs . In addition to the Hahambaşı, this also applies to the Christian Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople , and above all to the Grand Mufti , the highest Islamic legal scholar in the Ottoman Empire, who even held the rank of minister.

Due to the size and geographical location of the empire, which included not only Palestine , the historical homeland of the Jews, but also more diaspora communities than any other country, the Hahambaşı was also compared to the Exilarchen , the leader of the Jews during the Babylonian exile and later Persian Empire .

During the Ottoman Empire, the Hahambaşı had extensive legislative and judicial power over the members of his community and had direct access to the Sultan. The duties and rights of the Hahambaşı were regulated by imperial decree ( Berât ). It mainly concerned three points: firstly, religious authority and jurisprudence, secondly, the representation of the authorities and the collection of taxes, thirdly, the permission to read the Torah , which was tantamount to the right to build synagogues. The new office sparked a conflict between the traditionalists and the reform-oriented forces within the Jewish communities. The position of the Hahambaşı remained controversial for thirty years. Only with the appointment of the respected Grand Rabbis Yacob Avigdor and Yakir Gueron could the office of Hahambaşı be consolidated.

The chief rabbis of today's secular Turkish Republic also bear the title of Hahambaşı.

List of Hahambaşı in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic since 1835

(according to Encyclopaedia Judaica)

Abraham Levi Pasha 1835-1839
Samuel Hayim 1839-1841
Moiz fresco 1841-1854
Yacob Avigdor 1854-1870
Yakir Geron 1870-1872
Moses Levi 1872-1909
Chaim Nahum Effendi 1909-1920
Shabbetai Levi 1920-1922
Isaac Ariel 1922-1926
Chaim Bejerano 1926-1931
Chaim Isaac Saki 1931-1940
Rafael David Saban 1940-1960
David Asseo 1961-2002
Ishak Haleva since 2002

List of important Grand Rabbis in Constantinople before 1835

(according to sephardicstudies.org )

Eli Capsali 1452-1454
Moses Capsali 1454-1495
Elijah Mizrachi 1497-1526
Mordechai Komitano 1526-1542
Tam ben Jahja 1542-1543
Eli Rozanes ha-Levi 1543
Eli ben Hayim 1543-1602
Jehiel Bashan 1602-1625
Joseph Mitrani 1625-1639
Jomtov Benjaes 1639-1642
Jomtov Hananiah Benjakar 1642-1677
Chaim Kamhi 1677-1715
Judah Benrey 1715-1717
Samuel Levi 1717-1720
Abraham Rozanes 1720-1745
Salomon Hayim Alfandari 1745-1762
Meir Ishaki 1762-1780
Eli Palombo 1780-1800
Chaim Jacob Benyakar 1800-1835

See also

literature

  • Bernard Lewis : The Jews in the Islamic World. From the early Middle Ages to the 20th century. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51074-4 .
  • Yaron Ben-Naeh: Jews in the realm of the Sultans. Ottoman Jewish society in the seventeenth century. Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-16-149523-6
  • Joseph Hacker: The Chief Rabbinate in the Ottoman Empire in the Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries. Zion, 49/3 (1984), (Hebrew)
  • Haïm Z'ew Hirschberg, David Derovan:  Ḥakham Bashi. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 8, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865936-7 , pp. 245-244 (English).
  • Yaacov Geller, Haïm Z'ew Hirschberg, Leah Bornstein-Makovetsky:  Ottoman Emire. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 15, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865943-5 , pp. 519-542 (English).
  • Yaron Harel: Hakham Bashi. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 2: Co-Ha. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02502-9 , pp. 501-505.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Jewish Population of the World, 2010. Jewish Virtual Library; Retrieved January 4, 2012.
  2. ↑ Hirschberg, Derovan (EJ2), p. 245.
  3. ^ Lewis (2004), p. 117.
  4. ^ Lewis (2004), p. 118.
  5. ↑ See Ben-Naeh (2008), pp. 304 ff.
  6. ↑ Hirschberg, Derovan (EJ2), p. 245.
  7. ↑ Hirschberg, Derovan (EJ2), p. 246.
  8. ^ Lewis (2004), p. 156.
  9. ↑ Geller, Hirschberg, Bornstein-Makovetsky (EJ2), pp. 536f.
  10. ↑ Hirschberg, Derovan (EJ2), p. 246.
  11. ^ Chief Rabbis of the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey