24 September 2009 / ,
Turkey's chief rabbi met with Syrian President Bashar Assad recently, and exchanged a handshake and a warm greeting with him. In an interview with Ynet later, he described the leader as "nice.”
Yitzhak Haliba, 69, has been chief rabbi of Turkey since 2002. He was summoned by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to an İstanbul hotel on Wednesday for a special dinner with Assad, in honor of the latter's visit to the country. Other religious officials were in attendance, namely the Christian and Armenian patriarchs and the Muslim mufti, representing the country's main sectors. After the meal, which marked the end of the Ramadan fast, Assad and the prime minister both made speeches. "I shook Assad's hand when each of us religious officials presented ourselves to him. He told me, ‘You know, in Syria there is also a Jewish community.' I answered that certainly I know -- we are the ones who provide them with religious services when they need them, like a mohel or a butcher," Haliba said.
