ABSTRACT
Hayim David Hazan (1790–1869) served as head of the Jewish court in Izmir (1840–1855) and as the Hacham Bashi in Jerusalem (1861–1869). Izmir’s Jewish community, founded in the mid-sixteenth century, numbered around 20,000 souls in the 1870s, a third of which were poor whereas many rich families enjoyed European protection and were exempted from taxes. During the nineteenth century the city had known several severe conflicts between rich and poor, all revolving around the burden of taxes. Jewish communities usually collected direct taxes on kosher food called Gabela: meat, cheese and wine, and indirect taxes on income and capital. The later kind was progressive and had a ceiling that the rich were constantly trying to lower. In 1847, 2,000 of the community’s poor organized to claim that the taxes on kosher food, primarily meat, were unjustly raised. They threatened to convert to Christianity lest the tax be lowered. Being a ritual slaughterer, Hayim David Hazan offered to serve as their Rabbi until the matter be resolved, a capacity he held until his departure to Jerusalem in 1856.
