A reward of $5,000 is being offered for the safe return of two Torah scrolls stolen last weekend from the Chabad of Hawaii synagogue at the Ala Moana Hotel.
Each of the Torah scrolls is valued at approximately $50,000. One of the two is a “Holocaust survivor,” written by a scribe in Lithuania in the 1850s.
Rabbi Itchel Krasnjansky told media that whoever took the Torahs knew exactly what they were looking for. “There was nothing strewn around,” he told Hawaii News Now. Other valuables – including the sterling silver crown – were not touched.
Airport security as well as police and state sheriffs were immediately alerted in an attempt to prevent the thief from smuggling the scrolls off the island for sale on the black market.
This is not the first time the synagogue has been targeted: last fall, vandals spray-painted the word “Jews” on a sidewalk outside the synagogue.
