A Baltimore rabbi could be turning a false profit.
Menachem Youlus drew fame in the last decade for unearthing supposed Holocaust-era Torahs hidden in mass graves, monasteries and concentration camps throughout Europe, but many of those discoveries appear to be fakes, according to a new report.
Spinning sensational yarns of his hunts for sacred scrolls, the 48-year-old rabbi earned the moniker “The Indiana Jones of Torah Scribes” and sold the texts to US synagogues and Jewish families for $6,000 to $15,000.
One of the 1,100 recovered Torahs was bought by billionaire investor David Rubenstein and donated in 2008 to Manhattan’s Central Synagogue.
But The Washington Post poked holes in stories behind the Torahs’ origins, raising doubts about their authenticity.
Youlus sold a Virginia synagogue a Torah he claimed to have found in the floorboards of Bergen-Belsen, a German concentration camp. But the camp’s historian told the newspaper that no such discovery occurred.
Central Synagogue’s Torah also has a dubious provenance. Youlus claimed he secretly unearthed it in 2004 in a cemetery near Auschwitz, the Polish concentration camp.
Youlus, however, could not provide the newspaper with a single name or document to back up the tale.