Hayyim Palache

Pallache Family (Turkish Branch) (1,478 words) D Gershon Lewental Pallache Family (Turkish Branch)

The Pallache (Palaggi, Palache, Palacci) family originated in the Iberian Peninsula and had branches in many places along the Mediterranean littoral. It produced several leading rabbinical scholars in the Ottoman city of Izmir (Smyrna) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two of them, Ḥayyim ben Jacob and his son Abraham, served as chief rabbi (haham başı) and became the focus of a fierce dispute that engulfed the town’s Jewish community, while a third, Solomon ben Abraham, contributed to its decline.

Ḥayyim ben Jacob Pallache(January 28, 1788– February 10, 1868) was known by the Hebrew acronyms Ḥabif and Maharḥaf. A grandson of the noted scholar Joseph Raphael ben Ḥayyim Ḥazzan (Ḥazan, 1741–1820), he demonstrated erudition and an appreciation for literature at an early age. He studied under his grandfather and Isaac ben Elyakim Gaṭigno (d. 1839) and received his ordination from his grandfather. Ḥayyim Palache was a prolific writer who composed more than seventy works, beginning with Darke Ḥayyim (Izmir, 1821), on the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirqe Avot). His many other works appeared consecutively at short intervals (there is an incomplete list in Galanté, vol. 3, p. 18). The most noteworthy were Lev Ḥayyim (3 vols., Salonica, 1823; Izmir, 1870), Semikha le-Ḥayyim (Salonica, 1826), Nishmat Kol Ḥayy (2 vols., Salonica, 1832, 1837), Nefesh Ḥayyim (Salonica, 1836), Ṣedaqa Ḥayyim (Izmir, 1838), Ḥiqeqey Lev (Salonica, 1843), Ḥayyim Derakhav (Salonica, 1850), Reʾeh Ḥayyim (3 vols., Salonica, 1860), Ḥayyim ve-Shalom (Izmir, 1862), Birkat Mordekhay le-Ḥayyim (Izmir, 1868), Sefer Ḥayyim (Salonica, 1868), and Ginze Ḥayyim (Izmir, 1872). Among his other works were twenty-six manuscripts that were consumed in a fire.

In late 1837 Pallache was appointed head of a rabbinical court in Izmir. Subsequently he became a jurist (dayyan), instructor of Torah (marbiṣ torah), community rabbi (rav ha-kolel), and ultimately was appointed chief rabbi in 1854. Ten years later, in 1864, the Ottoman government awarded him the Mecidiye Order third class. Pallache’s thirty-year career coincided with a period of socioeconomic prosperity that saw the authority of the rabbinate consolidated. A pious man, Pallache dedicated all of his time to his work and kept long hours. As a rabbinic conservative, he opposed many modern innovations, such as the adoption of European dress.

Pallache’s stringent views affected his administration of the community, which was described by some as despotic, and precipitated the conflict that broke out in 1865 when the community’s secular leaders attempted to exploit his old age and failing health to seize control. In late November of that year, an administrative committee forced Pallache to submit all his decisions to its oversight. During 1866, a group of lay leaders purchased the concession for the gabela tax on kosher food and alcohol at a suspiciously low price. The concessionaires (gabelleros) responded to public complaints by agreeing to pay a slightly higher price but refused to allow an audit of their finances. This prompted Pallache to repeal the tax in its entirety. The gabelleros appealed to the locum tenens chief rabbi (haham başı kaymakamı) in Istanbul, Yaqir Geron (Guéron, in office 1863–1872), who sent his secretary to investigate the matter in December 1866. The latter recommended that Pallache should be removed from office and proposed himself as his successor. The Ottoman government authorized the change, but Pallache was very popular, especially because he had led the fight against the corrupt gabelleros. In the face of widespread public opposition, the governor of Izmir decided to put off implementing the appointment. Meanwhile the Pallachists and their opponents waged a fierce struggle in the streets of Izmir and Istanbul; some of Pallache’s partisans even personally assailed Geron. The Pallachists won the dispute, and Pallache was confirmed in office in October 1867. The elderly rabbi showed clemency toward his opponents and agreed to implement administrative reforms, but he died a few months later before carrying them out. His funeral was attended by all of the city’s dignitaries, and a synagogue, Beyt Hillel Pallache, was later named after him; there is, as well, an Israeli seminary in his honor in Bney Braq. As Shaw noted, the Pallache dispute reflected the lack of a clear definition of the functions of the Ottoman chief rabbi and the local chief rabbis the cities and provinces. It weakened Geron’s authority and led to the government’s failure to implement the Organic Statute of 1865 in Izmir until 1911.

The issue of succession prompted another struggle between the two camps. A small minority supported the appointment of the conservative Rabbi Joseph Ḥakim, the chief rabbi of Manissa, whereas the majority of the population preferred Abraham ben Ḥayyim Pallache (1809 or 1810–January 2, 1899), the son of the late rabbi, who supported various educational and administrative reforms. Jews holding foreign citizenship appealed to their consuls to take up the case, and fifteen thousand of the city’s Jews signed a petition in favor of Abraham. He succeeded his father as chief rabbi on October 7, 1869. An austere man, the younger Pallache nevertheless promoted modern education during his more than thirty–year tenure. He wrote a number of works, including Shamaʿ Avraham (Abraham Obeyed; Salonica, 1850), a collection of responsa; Ve-Hokhiʾaḥ Avraham (And Abraham Reproved; 2 vols., Izmir, 1853, 1862), on ethics; Berakh et Avraham (Blessed Was Abraham; Salonica, 1857), a collection of homiletical sermons; and Va-Yossef Avraham (Then Again Abraham ; Izmir, 1881), an elegy to the patriarch Joseph; and others (sixteen works are listed in Galanté, vol. 3, p. 22). Like his father, Abraham received various honors, including the Mecidiye Order second class, the Order of Osmaniye third class, and the Order of St. Sauveur of Greece.

Two other sons of Ḥayyim Pallache also played an important role in the Jewish community’s spiritual and social life. (Nissim Raḥamim) Isaac ben Ḥayyim, who served as community rabbi (rav ha-kolel) and as a member of the town’s rabbinical court, succeeded his brother Abraham briefly upon the latter’s death. He authored Avot ha-Rosh (The Principal Fathers; 2 vols., 1869), Yafe la-Lev (Good for the Heart; Izmir, 1906), Yafe Talmud (Excellent Is Study), and Pene Ḥayyim ve-Ḥeleq Yafe (The Face of Ḥayyim and a Fair Share), a collection of his father’s sermons.

Some members of the community wished to appoint a third brother, Joseph ben Ḥayyim Pallache (b. 1815/1819), the author of Yosef et Eḥav (Joseph and His Brethren; Izmir, 1896), to the post of chief rabbi, but this would have not have received governmental recognition because the law specified that such duties could only be undertaken by someone under the age of seventy-five. Therefore, Solomon ben Abraham, the nephew of Isaac and Joseph, was nominated, despite the fact that he lacked an appropriate scholarly background and had a reputation for causing discord. As a consequence, another individual, Joseph Eli (d. 1906), became the locum tenens, precipitating yet a third crisis between the Pallachists and their opponents.

A mixed committee of Jews and non-Jews resolved the dispute in Eli’s favor in July 1899, but Solomon and his brother Nissim refused to accept the decision and waged an opposition campaign, even disrupting Sabbath services led by their uncle Isaac on September 18, 1899. The situation required police intervention. In the end several Jewish notables were sent into exile, forcing the community council to decide to appoint Solomon to another position in the rabbinate. An outbreak of the plague further disrupted the affairs of the community. Rabbi Joseph ben Samuel Bensenior(1837–1913), who succeeded Eli in December 1900, attempted to resolve the crisis by appointing Solomon to head a rabbinical court, but as Galanté noted, this compromise proved distasteful even to his supporters and failed to resolve the matter. This third dispute precipitated a serious decline of the Izmir community from its recent apogee under Ḥayyim ben Jacob Pallache.

Another member of the family, Hillel Pallache, served on the council of the Jewish community of Izmir from 1929 to 1933.

Principle members of the Pallache Family. Courtesy of D Gershon Lewental.

D Gershon Lewental

Bibliography

Altalef, Shmuʾel. “Rabbi Ḥayyim Pallache, His Life and His Work: The Community Rabbi of the Jews of Izmir, Turkey,” Qove ṣ ha- Ṣ iyyonut ha-Datit 3 (2000): 308–325 [Hebrew].

Eckstein, Simon Aryeh Leib. “The Life, Work and Influence of Rabbi Chayim Palaggi on the Jewish Community in Izmir” (Ph.D. diss., Yeshiva University, 1970) [Hebrew].

Franco, Moise. Essai sur l’histoire des Israélites de l’Empire Ottoman depuis les origines jusqu’à nos jours (1897; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1973), pp. 193, 197–202, 240, 244–245, 267–269, 271, 274.

Galanté, Abraham. Histoire des Juifs de Turquie (Istanbul: Isis, 1985), vol. 1, pp. 256–257; vol. 2, p. 120; vol. 3, pp. 14–29.

Gaon, Moshe David. Oriental Jews in Eretz-Israel (Past and Present) (Jerusalem, 1938), pp. 559–561 [Hebrew].

Ḥasida, Yisraʾel Yiṣḥaq. Rabbi Ḥayyim Palaji u-Sefarav: Reshima Biyo-Bibliyografit, bi-Mloʾt Meʾa Shana li-F ṭ irato (5628– 5728) (Jerusalem: Moqire Maran ha-Ḥabif, 1968).

Shaw, Stanford J. The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (New York: New York University Press, 1991), pp. 67, 170, 173–175, 180, 183, 249.

Citation D Gershon Lewental. " Pallache Family (Turkish Branch)." Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. Executive Editor Norman A. Stillman. Brill Online , 2013. Reference. Jim Harlow. 02 January 2013 <http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-of-jews-...>