Published in The Jewish Press June 4, 2008

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Re Correction: "Failed Experiment: New York's Only Chief Rabbi" (front-page essay, May 30):

Dear Editor,

Please know that while the esteemed Rabbi Jacob Joseph was chief rabbi of New York, he was so only for Eastern European Ashkenazim. The 30,000 Balkan, Greek, Turkish and Syrian Jews of New York City had their own chief rabbi - first, Rabbi Dr. Nissim J. Ovadia, the former chief rabbi of the Sephardic community in both Vienna and Paris, and then Rabbi Dr. Isaac Alkalay, who was previously the chief rabbi of Yugoslavia. Both of these men held the title "chief rabbi" in New York. The Syrian community in the city had Chief Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin, the mekubal who came from Jerusalem.

All three of these men were descendants of a long line of rabbis and judges whose ancestors fled Spain during the Spanish Inquisition. Today, Rabbi Saul J. Kassin is chief rabbi of the Syrian and Near Eastern Jewish Communities in America.

Shelomo Alfassa

 

Note: In July 2012 The Jewish Press again published an article repeating the same error to which they printed my subsequent Letter to the Editor.