Baruch Ben Haim (Hebrew: ברוך בן חיים, November 18, 1921 – June 2, 2005)[1] was a Sephardi Hakham who served as Chief Rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York for 55 years.
[4] At age 11 Ben Haim entered Porat Yosef Yeshiva,[4] where he was a member of the so-called "wonder class" of students who went on to become noted Torah scholars and leaders in the Sephardi Jewish world.
[2] For a while he served as a dayan (rabbinical court judge) on the Sephardi Beit Din in Jerusalem, together with Rabbis Attiya and Yehuda Shako.
[2] In 1947 he accepted a rabbinical position in an Ashkenazi community in South Africa, which he served for two years.
[2] Ben Haim served as assistant rabbi to Kassin in Congregation Shaare Zion,[8] where he made a number of important contributions to the synagogue, including the establishment of the Shaare Zion Torah Center to educate the community in subjects of Torah and Jewish law.
[4] He spent several months each summer in Deal and Bradley Beach, New Jersey, addressing and strengthening the Syrian Jewish community in those locales.