Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who had
provided Torahs through a charity while fraudulently claiming they had been
rescued after being hidden or lost during the Holocaust, was sentenced to just
over four years in prison on Thursday by a judge who called his scheme sad and
incomprehensible. Youlus had pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. Prosecutors
said he claimed to have found Torahs at concentration camps like Auschwitz. The
Torahs were then provided to others by a charity he co-founded. Prosecutors also
say that defrauded the charity by seeking reimbursements for doctored or
inflated expenses or by diverting donations to him. The judge also ordered Youlus
pay victim restitution of $990,000. The judge had received many letters from
victims. One of the victims said that he had bought the Torah for $14,000 and
donated it to his synagogue in memory of his deceased father. Later, he was
falsely told that the Torah was found in a mass grave in the town where his
father was born in Southern Ukraine. Youlus realized what he did and couldn’t
object to anything. His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, made a strong appeal for
leniency. He acknowledged that his client did a horrific deed but said he had
been helping people all of his life. He also said that the money that the Rabbi
had taken wasn’t spent on fancy cars or homes so there were “no trappings of
wealth.”
What the Rabbi did obviously caused
a lot of concern and problems within the community. He took something very
sacred to a certain religious group and tried to make money off of it. Not only
did he take something sacred but he took a very sensitive time during the
Jewish culture and made it part of his scheme. This is obviously not the norm
it hurt not only the victims of his scheme but community also. The Torah is symbolizes
their religion. Just like the Bible symbolizes Christianity. The Rabbi is
supposed to be an honorable and trustworthy person in their community and he
turns out not to be. This is a public issue because it affected the lives of
many individuals. Not only did it affect the lives of the victim but also the
lives of many Jewish people. Like stated earlier, the Torah is a special item significant
to the Jewish culture and the Holocaust is a sensitive time in the Jewish
culture. Not only is a public issue but
on a more personal matter it’s a personal matter. It affects the victims and
their immediate family and friends. Many people bought the Torahs for special
reasons. Like one victim, he claimed he felt embarrassed for being tricked into
doing something so foolish. Just imagine how the other victims felt and how
they felt in front of their families. That is embarrassing. The sentence given
to the Rabbi is found just because of how sacred the text and the event were to
the Jewish society.
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