FEATURED JOBS
Back in February of 2010, I wrote an article about allegations that first appeared in the Washington Post that Rabbi Menachem Youlus – the Baltimore-based Judaica/bookstore operator known as the “Indiana Jones of Torah scribes” for his swashbuckling tales of rescuing Holocaust-era Torahs from Europe and other places – had fabricated his stories for profit.
Frankly, over the years, I’ve dealt with a lot of head-in-the-sand attitudes in the local Jewish community. But this time, it felt different.
Several people told me that even though they had strongly suspected over the years that the rabbi’s stories were largely nonsense, he still didn’t deserve a negative write-up in the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES. After all, they said, this guy was a very mentschy person who was willing to go to shuls of every stripe – even though he was Orthodox – and even shake the hands of female clergy.
“Don’t take this away from us,” one person yelled at me. “This is a decent man. He doesn’t deserve this. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
One rabbi told me that whenever Youlus spoke at his shul about the provenance of his Torah scrolls, he usually simply walked out of the room, preferring not to hear such fanciful tales that defied logic and reason. Another rabbi/educator complained that Youlus was being “crucified,” even though he admitted that he privately and quietly discounted some of Youlus’s stories.
“Should we judge him because he says things that don’t sound quite right?” he asked. “Do we stand behind him and support him, even if he’s not telling the whole truth since he did things that were not necessarily legal [to acquire and transport Torahs out of Europe]?”
Another Jewish communal official who’d bought one of Rabbi Youlus’s Torahs said of the accusations, “I’m saddened to hear this, but he has been so helpful with the continuing care of this Torah. I take it back to him once a year. I take it to his house, [and] he lives very modestly.” She attributed the rabbi’s alleged fabrications to the fact that “he wants people to feel good. This was a midrash.”
Midrash, eh?
Misplaced loyalty may be admirable, but it’s still misplaced.
As you likely know now, Youlus recently made international headlines when he pled guilty in a Manhattan federal court to defrauding a charity he founded called Save A Torah Inc. of $862,000.
“Menachem Youlus concocted an elaborate tale of dramatic Torah rescues undertaken by a latter day movie hero that exploited the profound emotions attached to one of the most painful chapters in world history – the Holocaust – in order to make a profit,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “Today’s guilty plea is a fitting conclusion to his story and he will now be punished for his brazen fraud.”
Between 2004 and 2010, about $1.2 million came in to Save A Torah, according to the court. An investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Complex Frauds Unit revealed that Youlus’s accounts were contradicted by historical evidence, witness accounts and records showing that he passed off used Torahs sold by local dealers.
In addition, records showed that Youlus never left the United States during some of the years he claimed to be finding Torahs abroad.
I met Youlus a couple of times over the years and I have to admit, he fooled me, too. When he spoke of his journeys to unearth Torah scrolls and bring them to “safety,” I didn’t really question it. Like everyone else, it made me feel good, like any good yarn does. After all, the man was very likable, articulate, personable, knowledgeable, open-minded – and who’s going to question a rabbi, right?
One of the first people who told me privately that they questioned Youlus’s stories was an Orthodox rabbi who’d had some negative business encounters with him. He said he discovered that a group of Torahs that Youlus said he “made kosher again” for him were never actually taken care of.
In conversation, when I made a comparison between Youlus and Deli Strummer, the local Holocaust survivor whose wartime accounts were strongly challenged by the organized Jewish community and historians, the rabbi said to me, “Excuse me, Alan, but I beg to disagree. Deli Strummer was an old lady who got caught up in her stories about the Holocaust and just liked the attention. Youlus is making money off the Holocaust with his bubbe meises about these Torahs. It’s disgusting. That’s blood money, and people in this community need to wake up.”
Youlus now faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and will be required to pay restitution to his victims. Sentencing is scheduled in federal court on June 21.
Around the time that allegations first arose against Youlus, I wrote a blog entry about how I was concerned that Youlus was still speaking about his Torah scrolls to my daughter’s class at Hebrew school. I didn’t mind his educating the kids about the Torah and why it’s sacred to the Jewish people. I just felt, as a parent, that he shouldn’t discuss where he allegedly got these scrolls from while he was being accused of creating falsehoods about them. And I felt the synagogue had a responsibility to put a muzzle on him.
“What do I tell my daughter now?” I wrote. “That there are questions about this bright, articulate, very likable man, raised by some of the very people who believed in him the most and spent their hard-earned dollars to spread the love of Torah in memory of their loved ones? How do I explain these serious allegations, one that could horribly damage the reputation of someone that many of us previously held as a highly moral individual on a very noble mission?”
One official at the shul angrily wrote to me, “There is nothing to tell your children yet, unless it is a lesson on how to avoid the common trap of confusing allegations with truth.”
Well, I guess that’s not really an issue anymore, is it?
Like I said, misplaced loyalty may be admirable, but it’s still misplaced.
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