Irene Siegel recalls standing in the cluttered Jewish Bookstore of Greater Washington last year listening closely as her husband, Bernard, told the Wheaton, Md., shop’s co-owner, Rabbi Menachem Youlus, about his family’s roots in the Ukrainian village of Vasilkov.
“Menachem said, ‘Oh, I’ve been there,’ and mentioned some names that he’d seen on gravestones [in Vasilkov],” said Irene Siegel, 80, who lives in Silver Spring, Md.
She recalled that when the rabbi mentioned the surname Chasinsky, her husband’s maternal family’s name, “Bernie got all excited.”
“But it all happened very fast,” she said. “It seemed to me that Bernie had given him all the clues and information first. Then, [Youlus] said, ‘I’ve got a Torah from there.’ It just seemed too coincidental.”
Siegel said that after her husband, 88, committed to paying over $18,000 for the Torah, which the couple donated last October to Pikesville’s Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation, she privately expressed her reservations about the believability of the rabbi’s story.
“Bernie said to me, ‘You don’t trust anyone!’ ” she said. “But it just sounded too good to be true or exaggerated a bit.”
A recent Washington Post investigative article on Youlus quoted Holocaust scholars, former customers and associates questioning the veracity of some of the rabbi’s accounts of “rescuing” Torahs in Central and Eastern Europe, many of which were allegedly hidden, stolen or buried during the Holocaust.
A Baltimore resident, scribe, CPA and graduate of Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Youlus, 48, is head of the Rockville, Md.-based Save a Torah organization.
Dubbed the “Indiana Jones of Torah scribes,” he claims to have discovered and refurbished hundreds of scrolls over the past two decades and speaks frequently at synagogues and Jewish schools across the country about his efforts and exploits.
Contacted recently via e-mail by the Baltimore Jewish Times, Youlus wrote that he was unavailable for comment at that time. Someone who answered the phone at his store also said the rabbi was unavailable.
A statement on Save a Torah’s Web site reads: “We request that the public not be misled by innuendo in one published report, and reserve judgment until after Rabbi Youlus is given a fair opportunity to respond. Save a Torah is turning to independent experts in the field to verify the origin of donated Torahs.”
In past interviews with media outlets, Youlus, a father of nine, has spoken about how he found Torahs in monastery basements, deep in the ground and even in former concentration camps. He said he had been beaten up and sporadically threatened as he attempted to smuggle Torahs out of some countries.
Youlus says he restores the Torahs to meet halachic standards and sells them to individuals or families, who in turn donate them to congregations in memory of deceased loved ones.
Despite the accusations against him, Youlus has his defenders.
Carol Pristoop, executive director of the Pearlstone Conference and Retreat Center near Reisterstown, Md., said 10 donors purchased a scroll for $10,000 from Rabbi Youlus for her facility in 2001.
“I’m saddened to hear this,” she said of the allegations, “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.”
Pristoop attributed the rabbi’s alleged fabrications to the fact that “he wants people to feel good. This was a midrash. It could be possibly fraud, but every Torah is sacred.”
In a Jan. 29 e-mail, Joel Shurkin, board chairman at Baltimore’s Chevrei Tzedek, alerted congregants about the Washington Post article on Youlus. Chevrei Tzedek has purchased two Holocaust-era Torahs from Youlus over the past seven years.
“We have no reason to doubt they are kosher, and we will continue to use and honor them,” he wrote.
Dr. Moshe Shualy, Chizuk Amuno’s ritual director, vigorously defended the scribe and strongly criticized the tone of the Washington Post article about Youlus.
“There was no moment in the article when there was a sense of compassion or insight into what he’s doing,” he said. “Is he a liar or a cheat? I don’t think that’s the case and I’ve known him for nearly 20 years. … He goes to Eastern Europe and acquires these Torahs from people who probably stole them from monasteries or museums.”
While defending the authenticity of Youlus’ Torahs, Shualy admitted that he has personally questioned the scribe’s anecdotes over the years.
“How does he find a [sefer] Torah at Auschwitz that no one else ever found? Of course there have been misstatements,” he said. “But I would trust him with my life.”
The executive editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times, Phil Jacobs, contributed to this report.