Born in 1940 in Istanbul, Isak Haleva graduated from the Jewish High School in Galata and continued with his rabbinic studies at the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he was ordained as a rabbi. Among his teachers there were Ovadia Yosef and Shimon Baadani. After serving in the Turkish army from 1961 to 1963 as a reserve officer in Manisa and Kayser, Haleva was appointed to the chief rabbinate, serving as a member of its bet din, and later on, for seven years, as deputy to the ailing chief rabbi, David Asseo. Over the years from 1963 to 2002, Haleva also taught courses in Hebrew and in…