Brooklyn, NY – A Torah worth $30,000 that was inside a car that was stolen from outside a Brooklyn synagogue Saturday evening was found safe Monday.
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Police say the Torah was found inside the stolen car on Avenue I and East 10th Street in Flatbush.
“The safety and sanctity of a Torah scroll means a great deal to our community,” said Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the area.
The Torah was first reported missing over the weekend. The man who was driving the car that had the Torah in it told police he parked the car on the street Friday afternoon and put his keys and wallet in a closet in the synagogue, a law enforcement official told NBC 4 New York.
When the man returned to the temple the next day to retrieve his keys and wallet, he told police the items weren’t there, the law enforcement official said. Then he went to check on the car, which he doesn’t own, and realized that was gone, too.
Police have not released information on arrests connected to the case.
Epes something doesn’t sound right about this case. But praise Hashem that this holy Torah was found safe!
Avenue I and East 10th Street is home to the Yeshiva of Flatbush which is surrounded by the last high tech color CCTV cameras the cops should obtain copies of the tapes which would easiy identify the ganof.
This whole story didn’t make sense to me. In the daily news it said that there was 5 pairs tefilin in the car as well. I wouldn’t and you wouldn’t leave items in your car that has approx $50,000 worth of stuff inside. In fact I wouldn’t leave the car period. I say it was an inside job for insurance money and they didn’t know it’s going to be that public. Sorry your plans didn’t work out, your gonna have to work smarter next time.
What do they use for brains in Brooklyn?? Again we have some ostensibly frum yid treating a sefer torah like a sack of potatoes and shticking it in the trunk of his car for shabbos….this must be the fifth or sixth the story we have read here on VIN over the past year where someone carelessly left a sefer torah where it could be stolen, burned in a fire or vandalized. Maybe somone can get the message out they a sefer torah has kedusah and is not some shmatah you leave lying around.
In the photo captioned above I don’t see the NYPD, just trucks from a rental fleet parked in a no parking zone in front of the synagogue as they do daily. Although the story is kind of hard to believe the owner of the car who was correcting the sefer Torah is credible . What’s odd is thaty the car was found on a heimishe dead end block evidently parked there by someone who took the car keys from inside the shul on Shabbos and drove the car.
tora
Story is a drop inaccurate – the shul in the picture is on 18th Avenue off Coney. And I agree that the story is fishy – leaving a sefer torah in a car over shabbos?
As questionable as the details of this theft are, that’s not what is bothering me. Why does every story about a stolen sefer Torah refer to the worth of the sefer Torah? The sefer Torah is not worth $30,000, its priceless. $30,000 is either how much was paid to produce it or how much it is currently valued at for insurance purposes, not its worth. It’s no secret anymore that we pay a lot of money to a sofer, but doesn’t broadcasting it every time a sefer Torah is stolen invite more theft?
How can anyone in his/her right mind leave a Sefer Torah in a car for even a minute, never mind overnight? Something isn’t right here and I think there needs to be a full blown investigation. The Torah isn’t worth $30,000–it’s priceless. That shul, by the way has two shuls in there–and Ashkenazi minyan upstairs and a Sephardic minyan downstairs. There is a Dunkin’ Donuts next door to it where a lot of people hang out and there are lots of day workers on the corner there too.