ONE of the couNtry’s Best known rabbis has broken a 16-year silence to reveal to Noseweek an extraordinary deal in which he agreed not to “go public” with the revelation that his FNB safety deposit box had been plundered by a bank employee.
In return for Rabbi Hirsch Rosenblum’s silence, First National Bank would not press him to pay its legal costs totalling around R800,000. The inducement, which many might consider a form of extortion, was made by FNB after the bank won a Supreme Court of Appeal test case against the rabbi in 2001. Judge RM Marais ordered Rosenblum to pay all FNB’s legal costs, which included two counsel at the appeal, and all the bank’s earlier high court costs.
“But I didn’t have to pay them,” says Rosenblum now. “FNB said if I wouldn’t go public, they would make a deal that I don’t pay their costs. If I kept quiet.”
“We had a Krugerrand bracelet and necklaces. There were heirlooms from my wife’s family that go back 200 years: blue and white diamond earrings. I had a IWC Schaffhausen gold watch and rabbinic papers that are totally irreplaceable.”
Rabbi Rosenblum, a 74-year-old native New Yorker from Brooklyn, was spiritual leader of the Emmarentia Shul in Joburg for 37 years. He retired at the beginning of 2016.
Denne historien er fra July 2017-utgaven av Noseweek.
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Denne historien er fra July 2017-utgaven av Noseweek.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.
