Have you heard the old story of of the goy who bought the community's chametz for Pesach and then turned out to be a Jew?
What about the story, joke actually, of the fellow learning in yeshiva with his chavrusa for 15 years and then one day tells his chavrusa he isn't Jewish. What do you mean you are not Jewish - you have been learning in yeshiva and learn as well as anyone else! Well, I love the learning, it is academic and intellectually stimulating, but I am not Jewish. What do you mean you are not Jewish - you eat only food with the best, most stringent, hechsherim!? I like the food, no problem. What do you mean you are not Jewish - we know a goy that keeps Shabbos is punishable by death, and I have seen for 15 years how strict you are in your Shabbos observance!? Well, actually I make sure to keep something in my pocket, so whenever I go outside I am actually carrying, so I never kept Shabbos. But there is an eruv! You think I hold of the good for nothing Rabbi's eruv? He doesn't know enough halacha to make a kosher eruv!
Well, this is not a joke or a laughing matter, but this incident in Jerusalem did remind me of that joke.
The Haredi community in Givat Hatzarfatit, French Hill, in Jerusalem was rocked when it turned out that a local well known family of immigrants form the United States were actually Christians, not Jewish. They were embedding themselves in the community to eventually missionize to Christianity. They got in with forged paperwork and settled in French Hill in Jerusalem and lived there for years as frum jews and pillars of the community. Mr Fraud was known well as a kohen, redeeming first born sons, along with duchaning and all the other kohen stuff. Additionally he officiated at weddings. He worked as a sofer stam, writing tefillin and mezuzos for people. The children went to the local schools, the cheider and bais yaakov. Mrs Fraud claimed to be the child of Holocaust survivors.
And he is, they are, actually goyim.
It seems their plans got thwarted somewhat when Mrs Fraud got sick with cancer. They raised a lot of money from the community during her illness and after her death, and put their plans on hold, so continued to go mostly undetected.
Somehow the fraud was recently discovered and Mr Fraud admitted the deception.
According to Behadrei, this was discovered a little while back but was kept quiet so he would not disappear while they tried to work with the authorities on getting their citizenship revoked. It seems that now he stopped sending his kids to school and have disappeared so they are publicizing this to prevent him from just moving to a different community that might be unsuspecting.
That is a crazy story. Their names and pictures should be publicized, so if they do move to another community, the community will be ale to find out who they really are.
To think of all those children who will need to be redeemed again, along with people who got married by him especially if he acted at times as a witness. The tefillin and mezuzos he wrote that are invalid that people bought and are using.
Wow
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