EAT WELL EAT SMART EAT KOSHER AND FOR THE FINEST OF KOSHER PRODUCTS
Look for this emblei - n and be a name
MI SIR
Association who sells only the finest of
not a number by shopping at a
select kosher products which are
member market of the Detroit area
certified kosher by a recognized
Retail Kosher Meat Dealers
Orthodox rabbinical council
SUNDAY APRIL 4th THROUGH
FRIDAY, APRIL 9th
TORAHS page 116
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FOR PASSOVER
WE WILL RE-OPEN THURSDAY MORNING,
APRIL 8th AT 9:00 A.M.
WISHING ONE AND ALL A HEALTHY PESACH!
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6734 Orchard Lake Road, near Maple
in the West Bloomfield Plaza, West Bloomfield
PHONE 932-3930 & 932-3931
OUR FAMILY HAS BEEN SERVING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY FOR
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STORE HOURS:
Sunday 8:30-5:00
Monday - Thursday 9:00 - 6:00
Friday 9:30 - 3:00
Established 1920
OUR MEMBER MARKETS FEATURE THE FINEST SELECTED EMPIRE KOSHER POULTRY.
BROUGHT IN FRESH DAILY FOR YOU THE CONSUMING PUBLIC TO ENJOY YOUR WAY.
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Kosins
Uptown
Southfield Rd. at
11 1 /2 Mile • 559-3900
Big & Tall
Southfield at
10 1 /2 Mile • 569-6930
market for thieves to make a
buck.
Growing up in the Judaica
business, for instance, Ab-
raham said that he had
heard of a small number of
soferim (scribes) with bad
reputations. Knowing that a
market existed, he said,
made the idea of Torah
thefts all the more alluring.
While one of the two
dealers who bought his
Torahs "never had an inkl-
ing" they were stolen, Abra-
ham said, the other "had a
closed eye." The strategy for
combatting Torah thefts
works on the premise that if
the market for hot scrolls
were shut down, the thefts
would disappear. And that
tactic has largely succeeded.
There was a rash of thefts
in the early 1980s, often at-
tributed to a Brooklyn-based
Russian Jewish crime ring,
although no charges were
ever brought, or to a
Manhattan Judaica dealer
who was tried and acquitted
of buying stolen Torahs. The
New York police, David
Pollack and Werner Loeb,
whose Setauket, N.Y., busi-
ness is registering private
property to prevent theft,
developed a system for
marking scrolls for positive .
identification.
This task is tougher than
it sounds. Like many things
that entice thieves — your
TV for instance — it is
difficult to tell one Torah
from another. That makes it
difficult to link any par-
ticular scroll to any par-
ticular theft, and tough for a
synagogue to prove owner-
ship.
But while you can etch a
serial number onto your
television set, religious law
forbids writing anything in a
Torah scroll except the
words of the Five Books of
Moses. Adding any addi-
tional markings could leave
the scroll pasul, or unfit for
reading.
So Mr. Loeb came up with
a plan of making 10 sets of
microscopic pin-holes in
Torah scrolls at specified
sites. The holes cannot be
seen by the naked eye, but
appear when light is passed
beneath them. Since each
registered Torah has its own
unique, pin-hole pattern, the
owner can positively identify
a scroll.
The pin-hole plan won ap-
proval from a number of
rabbinic authorities, and to-
day each major synagogue
association, from the Or-
thodox Agudath Israel to the
Reform Union of American
Hebrew Congregations,
backs the Universal Torah
Registry. Torahs are
registered also in Israel,
Brazil and Australia.
Marking Torahs is simple
and relatively cheap. For
$55, Mr. Loeb sends Torah
owners directions on how to
make the pin-holes, a unique
template for each scroll and
a set of pins. Torah owners
do the marking themselves.
Still, only 10,000 Torahs,
representing about 20 per-
cent of North American con-
gregations, are now
registered on Mr. Loeb's
system, he said. That means
that as many as 40,000 Nor-
th American scrolls remain
unmarked.
Mr. Pollack explained that
the system deters theft by
putting a burden of proof on
the purchasers of Sifrei
Torah to ask for documenta-
tion of ownership of the
scrolls. If purchasers know
that the registry can link a
scroll with its legitimate
owner, they will not agree to
buy a Torah without deman-
ding proof of ownership.
"The more extensive the
registry is," he said, "the
greater the legal necessity of
asking for documentation. If
there is a presumption that
the Torah is registered and
accounted for, that's a deter-
rent." ❑
Sympathizer
Is Jailed
Buenos Aires (JTA) — Nazi
sympathizer Carlos
Schellnast has been
sentenced to eight months in
jail for "activities of racial
discrimination" in Argen-
tina.
The 46-year-old Mr.
Schellnast was a suspect in
the investigation of the
desecration of 112 tombs in
the Jewish cemetery.
Investigators were never
able to charge him and
others with the actual inci-
dent, although a police sear-
ch of Mr. Schellnast's house
and those of other suspects
revealed weapons and ex-
plosives among anti-Semitic
literature and propaganda.
In Mr. Schellnast's senten-
cing, Judge Orfeo Maggio
applied, for the first time, a
1988 anti-discrimination
law that condemns all action
in which racial hatred is ex-
pressed in any way toward
any community.
The judge's decision was
significant because Mr.
Schellnast was convicted not
on the basis of his participa-
tion in the attack on the
cemetery — which could not
be proven — but because of
his statements inciting anti-
Semitism and racism •