Chabad UK slam Jews who danced with sex offender’s donated Torah scroll

Chabad in the United Kingdom is condemning a religious ceremony hosted by one of their movement’s synagogues honoring the donation of a Torah scroll by a sex offender.

A Chabad UK spokesperson says the organization had issued a “wide and loud condemnation of the celebrant and the event” in a statement to The Jewish Chronicle yesterday about the celebration last week at the Heichal Menachem synagogue in London.

Hundreds of congregants attended a celebration for the inauguration of a Torah scroll commissioned and paid for by Menachem Mendel Levy, a Londoner from the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green in the British capital’s north who was jailed for three years in 2013 for sexual assault on a girl younger than 16.

The event featured dancing and singing as the new Torah scroll was introduced into the ark.

— JTA