Judge rules against rabbi's widow in Torahs case

LATimes April 9, 2009

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has thrown out a religious court's decision to award four disputed Torahs to an Orthodox rabbi's widow who claimed that the scrolls had been stolen by her late husband's assistant.

The religious court, known in Hebrew as a beis din, ruled in January that the four Torahs belonged to Rita Pauker of North Hollywood. The scrolls had been in the care of her late husband's assistant, Rabbi Samuel Ohana, for more than a decade.

Pauker argued that a handwritten agreement between her late husband, Norman, and Ohana proved that the scrolls were lent to Ohana for only two years. Ohana maintained that Rabbi Pauker gave the Torahs to Ohana's Sherman Oaks congregation in 1998 after Pauker's own synagogue closed.

After the religious court ruled, Ohana refused to turn over the Torahs to Pauker. Instead, he appealed to a higher court in Israel. Pauker, meanwhile, took the case to the civil court system in Los Angeles, seeking to enforce the local religious court's ruling.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Zaven V. Sinanian ruled in Ohana's favor based on what he believed may have been a conflict for one of the three religious judges, Rabbi Nachum Sauer.[...]