Celebrity rabbi never knew about death threats

NEW YORK – The New York Police Department investigated Kahane Chai, a militant Jewish group, for threats against Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, asked the NYPD’s intelligence division to monitor the group in the late 2000s after anti-Boteach comments were posted on Kahane.org, according to internal NYPD documents obtained by Tablet, the online Jewish magazine.

“He commits incessant chilluley hashem and for that imho deserves death,” a website moderator on Kahane.org wrote in 2007, using the online name Doom777. “Someone shoot Shmuley Boteach,” the individual wrote a year later.

The NYPD launched a Terrorism Enterprise Investigation into the postings, enabling it to use informants and undercover officers to monitor Kahane Chai, which the State Department designated as a terrorist group in 1994. The NYPD’s investigation appears to have focused on web postings and online forums rather than infiltration of Kahanist groups, Tablet reported.

Boteach, a celebrity rabbi who wrote “Kosher Sex” and ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year from New Jersey, told Tablet that he was never informed of the threats.

Nobody appears to have been charged in connection with the online postings, according to the documents.