Rabbi Haim Nahum רבי חיים נחום

The office of hakham bashi—chief rabbi of the whole Ottoman Empire—had existed since the sixteenth century: the sultan recognised one man as head of the Jewish community from the Balkans to Yemen. The last to hold it was Rabbi Haim Nahum, appointed in 1908 after the Young Turk revolution.

For twelve years he led the communities of an empire disintegrating before his eyes: a world war, the fall of the empire, the partition of its lands. He had to deal with authorities that changed every few years, and to keep order meanwhile in communities from Salonika to Baghdad.

In 1925 he took the chief rabbinate of Egypt and held it for thirty-five years, until his death. Egyptian Jewry under him was large and well ordered; its end came almost immediately after—in the nineteen-fifties nearly the whole community left.