Chief Rabbi Placed on House Arrest for Graft
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Police placed Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, under house arrest following a 10-hour interrogation on corruption allegations.
According to The Jerusalem Post, police ordered Metzger not to leave his home for five days at the end of his interrogation Thursday.
Investigators from the National Fraud Squad raided his home and offices as part of a bribery, fraud, money-laundering and breach-of-trust case. Police suspect Metzger pilfered donations, the Post reported. Metzger’s lawyers said he denied all allegations against him.
Metzger is forbidden to make contact with either of the other suspects in the case, including Haim Nissan Eisenshtat, who worked for years as Metzger’s driver and personal assistant, and Simcha Karkovsky, the manager of the Beit Hatavshil charity in Bnei Brak.
Following an undercover investigation, officers went public on Thursday, arresting the three suspects and seizing documents, computers and other materials from Metzger’s home and office.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
