Jerusalem – Visitors at the Kosel Maarovi this week were in for a surprise: Offering no explanation, a man arrived, left a sefer Torah and quickly left the scene. According to Maariv Rav Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rov of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites, discovered the sefer Torah was worth tens of thousands of dollars.
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He sent the scroll to the Kosel sofer, Yisroel Gottlieb, who determined it was an old sefer Torah that is posul for leining. Upon examining the case that houses the sefer Torah – according to the Sephardic custom – he found the area that typically shows the name of the owners or donors or a dedication had been removed.
Based on concerns the sefer Torah had been stolen, Rav Rabinowitz reported the incident to the police and STAM organizations as part of efforts to locate the shul it was taken from.
Rav Rabinowitz says if the owners are not found, the sefer Torah will be retired as is and buried in a cemetery.
Strange. I doubt it is stolen. No one abandons a valuable object they stole. More likely it was found by a non frum yid who didnt know what else to do with it and figured it wd be rescued at the kosel. Even if it were strolen and the thief had regrets, they wd return near the scene of the crime.
Why would they not use it? Surely the best thing to do would be to use it very often in the hope that someone will recognise it.
old pasul torahs are not worth tens of thousands of dollars.
The value is much closer to zero.
If it is worth tens of thousands of dollars, why would they bury it?
Some thieves in Israel do have a religious conscience – a frind of mine was visiting Israel and all his stuff was stolen from his car including his tefillin. After he returned to the US he got a call from a yeshiva in Israel saying someone had left his tefillin there.
My guess is it was stolen, but because of its condition the theif couldn’t find a buyer, and was afraid of being caught returning it. Not knowing what to do with it, he left it at the Kosel – to minimize his avera.
Just a guess, based on the details of the account, and the fact that Torah thefts are not so uncommon here.
What they mean to say is if it were kosher or were fixed then that type of Torah with the case would be worth Tens of thosands of dollars.
The problem here is they don’t know anything about the Torahs origins like who wrote it and if it were written according to all the Halachot. So they can’t read from it even if it were ‘fixed’.
Therefore they have to bury it.
Of cource it is worth a lot of money ..
But they dontwant us to know that. So they say it will be buried but what they mean by that is that they will sell it and hide the money they make on selling it
Amazing how people can speak so authoritatively about something they know nothing about. Well I know how much to trust halachic opinions here.
Why can’t they check the security cameras to identify the “doner”
Whats the big deal, people think they can drop of shaimos in every shul, ask the guy who does everything at yours how many pairs of tzitzis (btw not shaimos), sets of old seforim, weekly devar torah prints, or old benchers “show up” at shul regularly.
there are many new shuls (including reform and conservative) that would pay big money to have an old sefer torah. They are not so much concerned about whether it is kosher or pasul for leining but simply want to have the older torah as an artifact to lend their notion of “kedushah” to their shul or beis medrash. Maybe the proceeds from selling such a sefer would be better used for a legitimate tzedakah than simply burying the sefer.