I find my friend’s self-scrutiny impressive in the extreme
More than a decade ago, I wrote a brief pre–Yom Kippur column about a friend of mine, and how he had found within himself the power to forgive someone who had defrauded him.
My friend moved to Israel with a fortune by Israeli chareidi standards, with the intention of starting a side business manufacturing for the Israeli chareidi market. Hoping to learn most of the day, and knowing nothing about establishing a manufacturing operation in China, he decided he needed to take an Israeli partner. Here is how I described what happened next:
Unfortunately, like many a naïve American before him, he was unlucky in his choice of partners, and did not heed various warnings that a kippah on the head is not always a certificate of honesty. Somehow his partner convinced him that he should be the sole name on the bank account, and chose for the accountant his brother-in-law, without revealing the relationship.
The business did well, but one day my friend awakened to find that everything had been stolen out from under him, and he had lost not only his profits but his considerable initial investment.
Create a free account to keep reading.
