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Bruno Trentacost (313) 628-1406 "Where You Come First" 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 •