David Asseo, the chief rabbi of the tiny Jewish community in Turkey, who strove for decades to buttress tolerance among the different religions there, died on July 14 in Istanbul, where he lived. He was 88.

At his death he was the longest serving of the chief rabbis in Europe, with 40 years as chief rabbi and spiritual leader, and was a former secretary of the Conference of European Rabbis.

He was a Sephardic Jew, as are most of Turkey's Jews, descended from ancestors who were expelled from Spain in the late 1400's. The half-dozen languages he knew included Ladino, a variant of Spanish with words borrowed from other tongues.

According to the Chief Rabbinate's office in Istanbul, there are 22,000 Jews in Turkey, a country of about 65 million people.

Rabbi Asseo was born in Istanbul and attended schools in Haskoy, the city's Jewish quarter. In 1933 he graduated from a Jewish school on the Greek island of Rhodes with a diploma qualifying him to teach Hebrew and Jewish religious subjects.

His subsequent career largely reflected his community's needs as a diminutive minority. He was active in educational institutions that reaffirmed their pupils' and students' Jewish heritage.

In 1933 he began teaching at schools in Istanbul. He went on to teach Hebrew at the Jewish High School. After completing his military service, in 1936 he was named a member of the Bet Din, or rabbinical court, later becoming its secretary as well as private secretary to Chief Rabbi Rafael Saban.

In 1955, Rabbi Asseo also became headmaster of an academy of Jewish learning in Haskoy of which he was co-founder.

He was elected chief rabbi by Turkey's Jewish community after the death of Rabbi Saban in 1960 and started his duties on Dec. 9, 1961.

As the years passed, he conferred with successive leaders of the Turkish government, cabinet ministers, lesser government figures and leaders of political parties. He also stayed in touch with high-ranking figures in Islam, Roman Catholicism and the Greek and Armenian minorities in Turkey.

Turkey's prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, said after the chief rabbi died that he "was a fine clergyman who always defended interreligious understanding and served for the peoples' happiness."

In 1997, Rabbi Asseo wrote, "Throughout the years that I have served as chief rabbi in the Turkish Republic, I can state without hesitation that all religions have been practiced in our country freely and unhindered."

And yet terrorists, thought to be Palestinians, killed a score of Jewish worshipers and themselves in Istanbul's largest synagogue, Neve Shalom, in 1986.

Rabbi Asseo's deputy, Rabbi Isak Haleva, is to fill in as chief rabbi until a new one is elected.

Rabbi Asseo's wife died before him. He is survived by two daughters and two grandsons.

Contributed by Eric Pace.

Sema Karaoglu, Founder
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