Las Vegas Theft of Torah Scroll Ends With Its Return Hours Before Jewish Holiday
The recent coming back of a stolen Torah scroll is being described as a Las Vegas miracle. It comes just hours before the scratch line of the Jewish new year.
The Torah, which has the handwritten text of the quintuplet books of the Hebrew Bible, was stolen on June 12 from The Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip.
On Friday, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) officers said the Torah was discovered slow an unidentified building o'er a month ago, KVVU, a local TV station, reported. The woman who found the roll latterly took it to the LVMPD.
The scroll’s owner, Jack Abraham, a New York-based jeweler, lately upped the repay for its take back from $10,000 to $40,000. He said no questions testament follow asked if it was returned. It has great sentimental value for him and his family.
Local police turned the Laws over to a local rabbi. He was to play it to Abraham.
When speaking to KVVU, Rabbi Mendy Harlig of Chabad Hasidism of Henderson, Nev., called the Torah’s bring back a “miracle” — especially that it was given to authorities just now hours before the Judaic unexampled year, known as Rosh Hashanah. The holiday begins at nightfall on Sunday.
Starting on June 8, the Pentateuch was kept within a big convening way where some 400 religiously observant Jews prayed and register from the sacred text during a Las Vegas jewellery merchandise show: the JCK Las Vegas. It is North America’s largest yearly jewellery trade in event.
Suspect Described
So far, no more I was arrested for the Torah’s theft. If someone is arrested, the suspect could follow charged with grand larceny, KLAS, another local TV station, reported.
A possible suspect was seen on surveillance footage released over the summertime past the LVMPD. It appears he placed the Torah in a suitcase with wheels and left hand the complex.
He is believed to be 'tween his 20s and 30s, and is around 5-feet, 11-inches to 6-feet, 2-inches tall, according to the LVMPD. The possible thief was wearing a bleak hat, unripe shirt and obscure pants at the time.
Over the summer, Abraham revealed the thief tried to sell the scroll, the Jewish Week, a New York-based publication, reported.
Sentimental Value
For some 25 years, Ibrahim on a regular basis took the scroll to the yearbook jewelry convention and it was used inward spiritual services. Ibrahim also used it inward many tonality events in his family’s lifetime and brought it when he visited such locations as Russian capital and Israel.
“It’s been to Israel for my grandson’s exclude mitzvah, it’s been at the weddings of my son, my daughters and brit of my grandkids,” Ibrahim said, according to KSNV. On the Laws are incised the names of his children, grandchildren and other relatives.
It has a tremendous amount of meaning for the menage and all those people that depend on it from all those years,” Abraham has said. “You sense the tone of Shabbat wheresoever we experience the demo because of this Torah.”
Abraham is prexy of Congregation Anshei Shalom, an Afghanistani synagogue and community center inward Jamaica Estates, Queens, N.Y. His household is originally from Afghanistan.