General · EdgepediaOctober 10, 20268 min read

Moses Fresco (Moiz Fresko)

Moses Fresco (Moiz Fresko) was a Constantinople-born Talmudist who served as the third holder of the office of Hakham Bashi, the Chief Rabbi recognized by the Ottoman state, from 1841 to 1854 according to the official succession lists, though the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia dates the start of his tenure to 1839.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Life dates	Born at Constantinople in 1780; the Jewish Encyclopedia records his death there in 1850, while the succession lists carry his tenure to 1854¹^•²
Office	Third Hakham Bashi of the Ottoman Empire, serving between Samuel Hayim (1839–1841) and Jacob Avigdor (1854–1870)²
Tenure dates	1841–1854 in the official succession lists; the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia gives 1839 as the year he succeeded Samuel Ḥayyim²^•¹
Documented act	On 27 October 1840 he met Sir Moses Montefiore and consented to an order requiring every Jewish school to employ a master to teach children Turkish³
Writing	A collection of responsa, Yadaw shel Mosheh, published in Salonica in 1818 and much quoted by the rabbis of the East¹
Context	He held the office during the Tanzimat reforms (1839–76), when the chief rabbi's relationship with the rulers became the most important aspect of his position⁴

Life and background

The Jewish Encyclopedia identifies Fresco as a Turkish Talmudist, born at Constantinople in 1780 and died there in 1850.¹ His rabbinic career was established well before his appointment: the responsa collection Yadaw shel Mosheh appeared in Salonica in 1818, when he was about 38, and was much quoted by the rabbis of the East.¹

The office of Hakham Bashi in his era

A new, state-created office. Until 1835 local congregations elected their own chief rabbis without any central representative body; Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) then issued a decree granting official recognition to the office.⁵ A Turkish academic thesis notes that although some hold the Hahambaşılık was formally established under Mehmed II, who recognized Moshe Capsoli, its authority likely did not extend beyond Istanbul, and that the empire-wide office was instituted under Mahmud II, who officially recognized the Istanbul chief rabbinate in 1835.⁶ The Encyclopaedia Judaica places the confirmation of the first ḥakham bashi, Rabbi Abraham Levi, in Constantinople at the end of 1836 or the beginning of 1837, while the Dayan Center study gives Abraham Levi the office from 1835 to 1836; the two accounts differ on the exact date.²^•⁵ A Princeton Geniza annotation adds that the office was officially established in the year of Ḥayyim Yaʿḳov Benyakār's death (1835), Benyakar having led Istanbul's Jewish community from 1800 to 1835, and that after 1835 the title referred to the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul who, at least in theory, represented all Jewish subjects of the sultan.⁷

Powers defined by the berat. The imperial patent of appointment, the berat, covered three interrelated matters: the hakham bashi's religious powers, his powers as representative of the government (including tax collection), and permission to read the Torah, which effectively permitted permanent synagogues despite the Covenant of Omar.² Provincial berats stated expressly that they were granted upon the recommendation of the hakham bashi of Constantinople, who was thus the head of all the rabbis in the empire, though provincial Hakham Bashis were technically his equals.² The Montefiore diary, written during Fresco's tenure, describes the Haham Bashi as the head of all the Jews in the Turkish Empire whose decrees are law.³

Real limits. Scholarship on the office tempers that picture. The creation of the institution in 1835 transformed the chief rabbi from the senior religious figure within Jewish society into its senior government official, a change described as weakening Jewish autonomy.⁴ Despite official recognition in 1835, the Hahambaşılık could not represent all Jews of the empire because of the hierarchical structure of Jewish religion and the lack of unity among communities, a shortcoming that later prompted the 1865 Hahamhane nizamnamesi.⁶ Recent scholarship argues that up to the mid-nineteenth century rabbinical leadership in Ottoman Jewish communities was loose, lacked a clear hierarchical structure, and that lay leaders were generally more influential than rabbis politically.⁸ A recent Brill monograph likewise argues that rabbis played a less prominent role as communal and spiritual leaders of Ottoman Jewry than previously thought.⁹

Tenure as Chief Rabbi (dates disputed)

The Montefiore encounter. On Tuesday, 27 October 1840, the Haham Bashi, "Signor M.H. Fresco," came to Sir Moses by appointment, together with several leading members of the community and the secretary of the congregation.³ Sir Moses recommended that he issue an order that every school should have a well-qualified master to teach the children to read and write the Turkish language, offering to pay the first expenses; the Haham readily consented.³ An order to that effect was drawn up in the Turkish, Spanish, and Hebrew languages and promulgated all over the country.³

Tanzimat context. Fresco's tenure fell within the Ottoman reforms of 1839–76, during which security, protection, and equality before the law were promised to members of all religions, and during which the chief rabbi's relationship with the rulers became the most important aspect of his position.⁴ The era was also one of factional conflict: of the five chief rabbis officiating in Constantinople between 1836 and 1863, three were deposed by the community and one was dismissed by the government because of his non-Turkish nationality.² In a provincial community during Fresco's tenure, the 1846–1847 gabela crisis in Izmir saw the wealthy put a disproportionate financial burden on the poor by making them pay the meat gabela, an indirect tax on kosher meat that made meat unaffordable for them, while community elites were exempted; this prompted the poor members of Izmir's Jewish community to split and temporarily form a community of their own.¹⁰

The Damascus affair and European intervention

The crisis that framed Fresco's early tenure was the 1840 Damascus affair, a blood libel against Jews of Damascus. One account says that in August 1840 Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Crémieux won the release of the tortured Jews of Damascus, but Muhammad Ali refused to exonerate them; Montefiore then proceeded to Istanbul to obtain the sultan's condemnation of the libel and future protection for Ottoman Jewry.¹¹ A different account says that a public meeting at the Mansion House in London on July 3, 1840 led to the dispatch of Crémieux, Solomon Munk, and Montefiore to Alexandria, where on August 28 they obtained the unconditional release and recognition of the innocence of the nine prisoners who still remained alive of the thirteen imprisoned.¹² A further account reports that on September 4, 1840, with a bribe of 60,000 piasters, Mohamed Ali agreed to release, not pardon, the imprisoned Damascene Jews.¹³

The firman of Abdülmecid I of 6 November 1840 denounced the blood libel, stressing "that the charges made against them and their religion are nothing but pure calumny," and specified that Jews were to be included in the reforms of the Hatt-i Serif of Gülhane with the same privileges as other subjects.¹¹ The Montefiore diary records that a firman was obtained from the Sultan declaring the Israelitish nation would enjoy the same protection and advantages as all other subjects.³

The aftermath shaped the century that followed. Blood libels recurred throughout the Middle East after 1840, and the vulnerability of Ottoman Jewry contributed to the founding of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860, which built a network of schools giving a French education to Jews in the Middle East.¹¹^•¹³ Fresco died before the Alliance was founded.¹

Writings and religious outlook

The main surviving window into Fresco's rabbinic outlook is the responsa collection Yadaw shel Mosheh, published in Salonica in 1818 and much quoted by the rabbis of the East.¹

Succession and the office after Fresco

The succession lists record Jacob Avigdor as Fresco's successor, serving from 1854 to 1870.² The regulations that later regularized the rabbinate, the Hahamhane Nizamnāmesi, were drafted by Yakir Geron, Chief Rabbi of Edirne between 1863 and 1872, and approved by Istanbul in 1865; they defined the duties, powers, and election principles of the Chief Rabbinate, postdating Fresco's tenure.⁵ Later holders show how the office evolved: Moshe ha-Levi (c. 1827–1910) served from 1872 to mid-1908 as acting chief rabbi, a tenure defined by his own conservatism and that of the Ottoman régime with whom he maintained close ties, and Chaim Nahum succeeded him in 1909.¹⁴ A contemporary parallel to Fresco's era is Rabbi Chaim Abraham Gagin, born in Istanbul in 1787, who received from the Ottoman Sultan in 1842 a wooden staff with an ivory knob upon appointment as Rishon LeZion, becoming the first to hold both the Hakham Bashi and Rishon LeZion titles simultaneously; he died in 1848.¹⁵

References

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026