Rabbi’s Car Stolen — With $30K Torah Scroll Inside
Thieves stole a Brooklyn rabbi’s car, with his synagogue’s $30,000 Torah scroll stashed in the trunk.
Luckily, the joy-riders were more interested in a free ride than religious edification, and never touched the holy book, which was found untouched when the car was recovered by cops, the New York Post reported.
“I cannot forgive myself. I was in shock. I felt as if somebody died, as if a house burned,” Rabbi Binyamin Tamaiev told the paper. “How could someone go into a holy place, steal keys and a car?”
The caper unfolded Rabbi Binyamin Tamaiev parked his Toyota outside Congregation Agudath Sholom in Flatbush shortly before the start of Sabbath on Friday afternoon.
After services, he left his keys in the synagogue and walked home. When he arrived at shul on Saturday, his car was gone.
Police found it abandoned nearby.
Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) offered a $3,000 reward for information leading to its return.
“I hope it helped,” Hikind said.
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.
