East London Jewry settles prolonged dispute with rabbi

The tiny East London Jewish community can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the rabbi it employed but then fell into a dispute with finally moved out of the community-owned rabbinical house this week. This means that the community will, at long last, be able to bring rabbonim out for Shabbat and yom tavim, and move out of the limbo imposed by the dispute with the Rabbi Chanoch Galperin.

“I feel relieved that we are finally getting our community house back, but this experience has left our community traumatised,” says a community member, speaking anonymously. “Now, we will pick up the pieces.”

The East London Jewish community has essentially halved over the past ten years, with many members passing away or leaving. The dispute with the rabbi and his illegal occupation of the house meant that it was “hanging on by a thread”, but it still hopes to keep going. “We will do it in our own way,” says the anonymous community member.

The community hopes to one day turn part of the house into a small shul, while selling the original community shul. With only 25 people left, it doesn’t need a bigger facility, and selling the shul will bring in much-needed funds. However, it still needs to recover the costs owed to it, some legal details need to be finalised, and the impact of the dispute will reverberate for years to come.

It all began in 2018, when the community accused Galperin of forging the will of a community member, the late Israel Bayer, and diverting funds meant for the East London Chevrah Kadisha (ELCK) to himself. This dispute was first seen before the Johannesburg Beth Din in September 2019. The Beth Din initially found Galperin innocent, but then formally withdrew and set aside this ruling.

The rabbi then admitted that his wife wrote out a new will for Bayer, in which the third allocated to the ELCK would go to him. However, in South African law, a wife writing a will automatically disqualifies her husband from benefitting from it.

The ELCK has now reached a settlement with Galperin in which each party would receive half of the third allegedly allocated to the rabbi. The other two-thirds will go to the Chevrah Kadisha Johannesburg and Arcadia Children’s Home, as was recorded in Bayer’s last will dated 18 October 2017.

The advocate representing the ELCK and the East London Hebrew Congregation, Stanley Pincus, says “This has been one of the most fascinating cases in my 40-plus years at the Bar, but probably the most frustrating, as it took us five years to reach this point [of the rabbi agreeing to leave the house], even though we had court orders in our favour.”

The community fired the rabbi in 2020 in the wake of the will dispute and after a disciplinary hearing. However, Galperin and his wife continued to live in the community’s rabbinical home in defiance of his employment contract, which instructed him to vacate the home upon its termination.

The couple “refused to vacate the home, and didn’t pay one cent towards its unlawful occupation for approximately five years”, says Pincus. “They paid only for electricity and water so as to not get cut off by authorities.

“The rabbi essentially delayed vacating the house by exhausting all legal remedies, even going right up to the Constitutional Court with the matter and losing the case there,” he says. “That set back the process for at least another three years.”

The community’s contract with the rabbi would have ended in May 2024, so even if the couple had stayed until the end of their original employment period, they have been squatting in the house for a year. A judge eventually ordered their eviction, which they at first appealed. They eventually put the appeal aside and agreed to a settlement, vacating the property on 15 June 2025.

Pincus was born in East London and grew up there, which means the case had a personal impact on him. “I’m relieved that community organisations can now continue to do their good work and the community can move forward,” he says.

As for the man at the start of the story, Israel Bayer – whose legacy was profoundly impacted – the community will ensure that he isn’t forgotten.

The SA Jewish Report reached out to the Beth Din, Rabbi Galperin, and his legal team for comment, but hadn’t received a response by the time of publication.