A man who posed for years as a Chareidi Rav in Israel, officiating at chasunos and conversions and selling mezuzos, was exposed as a Christian missionary by the Yad L’Achim organization on Tuesday.
The organization issued a statement that a man calling himself Ariel Katzenberg has been serving as a Rav for years while simultaneously performing Christian baptism ceremonies and converting Jews to Christianity.
Katzenberg, who also delivered Torah shiurim, regularly marketed himself to newcomers to Israel, offering to produce documents proving their Judaism or “conversion” to Judaism for tens of thousands of shekels.
He managed to produce documents with forged seals of well-known Batei Din, some claiming that the newcomers had undergone giyur in Israel approved by the Rabbanut.
According to Yad L’Achim, Katzenberg first began posing as a Rav in Bnei Brak and later moved to Migdal HaEmek, Harish, and Tiveria.
Yad L’Achim exposed Katzenberg by obtaining video footage of him performing baptisms and presenting it to the police along with the forged documents he presented to Batei Din and demanding an investigation.
“We demonstrated to the courts that the documents had been forged and they were shocked,” says Rabbi Shimon Abergel, field coordinator for the organization’s counter-missionary department.
(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)
