Born London, May 4, 1962.
Died Herne, Dorset, March 22, 2008, aged 45.
Philanthropist Benzion Dunner, who died in a car crash, embodied the Jewish tradition of literally marrying scholarly intellect to business acumen. He was the grandson of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations’ senior rabbi and Beth Din principal, Rabbi Joseph Dunner, who died last year, and the second son of Aba Dunner, well-known in the Orthodox community as executive director of the Conference of European Rabbis and also a Barnet local councillor.
Saatchi Synagogue founder Rabbi Pini Dunner is one of his three brothers. They and his sister survive him. The Dunner family originated in northern Slovakia, near the Tatra mountains, but moved to Germany before the First World War. Benzi, as he was known, continued his Jewish studies throughout his life, tutored initially by rabbinic uncles on both sides of the family.
When he married Esther Stern in 1986, the West End dinner at the Hilton Hotel — though less flamboyant than the 1,100-guest wedding for her older sister seven years earlier — made news not just for its 800 guests but the energetic dancing of the Bobover Rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam, uncle of the bride’s father, property tycoon Willy Stern. Hungarian-born, Harvard-educated William Stern launched his property and investment company, Stern Holdings Group, in 1971, after breaking away from his father-in-law, Osias Freshwater, who built up a postwar property empire of blocks of mansion flats. Helped by his predecessors’ achievements, the new son-in-law built up his own business interests based largely on property, and expanded the range of beneficiaries, who themselves grew through his gifts.