The late Rabbi Yaakov Edelstein
The late Rabbi Yaakov EdelsteinYaakov Cohen/Flash90

The family of the late rabbi of Ramat Hasharon, Rabbi Yaakov Edelstein, paid off a two-shekel debt that the late rabbi owed to a taxi driver who drove him 23 years ago.

Yona Kirshenbaum, who knew the late Rabbi Edelstein, told Kol Barama Radio how the family found the driver: "We have a group for our synagogue, so I wrote that the rabbi owed two shekels. In the morning, someone wrote to me that he has a coworker who once worked in deliveries, and the family had called him."

He continued, "In the morning I called him, I told him the story. He said, 'That's my grandfather, he lives in Rishon Lezion. I didn't believe there would be people who remember and write about two shekel.'"

On Thursday, the Edelstein family published an "unusual notice" saying that, "The family is urgently seeking Reuven Katayav of Rishon Lezion, the taxi driver who transported the late rabbi, of blessed memory, on October 30, 2001, 23 years ago, in Bnei Brak, in order to return the missing two shekels which were found noted in his handwriting and found today among his writings."

His son-in-law Rabbi Moshe Re'em, head of the kollel (yeshiva for married men) and institutions in Ramat Hasharon, told Israel National News - Arutz Sheva why the family was so insistent on returning the money: "It is not theft and not a debt, but a matter of returning a lost object, which Torah law does not require us to work hard and find someone at great expense, but in any case, the rabbi made a note to himself, even though there is no obligation."