Rabbi Owed Millions in Loans, Congregants Say : Crime: Abraham Low’s financial woes preceded arrest on money laundering charges.

For months, members of the Mogen Abraham synagogue knew that Rabbi Abraham Low was in deep financial trouble.

Having launched an ambitious talmudical academy on top of his synagogue’s usual obligations, he found it impossible to pay back millions of dollars in loans from wealthy congregants, sources in the Orthodox Jewish community said.

As a result, some members left the synagogue, which Low’s father-in-law founded in the 1950s as a refuge for European immigrants.

“Low could not show his face in some places,” according to one community leader.

Things were so bad that even Sol Kest, whose name looms largest among contributors who paid for the congregation’s big, brick building on La Brea Avenue, does not deny offering the rabbi $60,000 to get out of town and not come back for 10 years. So when the FBI arrested Low on Monday on money laundering charges, it put things into focus for the remaining members of Low’s close-knit but often fractious congregation, who grimly vowed to raise the money to get him out of jail.

“Whatever borrowing he did, if he did it, he did it strictly in order for this Torah (Bible) education,” said one member, a lawyer who grew up in the congregation and attends twice-daily prayers.

When the word went out that bail might be set at $3.5 million, members decided that 10 men would raise $35,000 each toward a bail bond.

“The focus was, ‘What can we do to help him?’ ” the lawyer said of the mood at shaharit, or dawn, prayers this week. “Whatever it takes to get him out of there, we’ll do.”

But even $350,000 was not enough; a federal magistrate refused to let Low out of custody for fear that he would leave the country.

Low, rabbi of the congregation for 15 years, is a man known for pithy Yiddish sermons on fine points of Bible and Jewish law. He was charged with money laundering, a form of tax evasion involving fake donations of unreported cash. Religious organizations are not routinely audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Together with two alleged confederates, he also was said to have received and cashed a stolen cashier’s check for nearly $500,000.

“I assume he was investing in some real estate deals, and when things went sour he couldn’t pay them back,” the community leader said. “But the biggest question was, ‘Why did intelligent people, who made lots of money elsewhere, invest their money with him?’ ”

Investors who are angry today made profits when they helped their rabbi get started in real estate during the property boom of the 1980s. Low bought houses and apartment buildings for the scholars of his talmudical academy, community sources said.

But a deeper answer may lie in the history of the Hasidic movement, a fervent way of prayer and study that has its roots in the dynastic rabbinical courts and seminaries of prewar Eastern Europe. Hasidism differs from other strands of fundamentalist Judaism in its devotion to charismatic rabbis known as tzadikim, or holy men.

Born in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland, the founders of Low’s congregation were raised in different schools of Hassidism. Many of them survivors of World War II death camps, they came to Los Angeles with little but their youthful training in the intricacies of the Talmud, a complex compendium of legal commentary written by ancient sages.

Over the years many of them set up businesses and prospered, and in the mid-1950s, Rabbi Judah Isacsohn, who was to become Low’s father-in-law, opened Mogen Abraham, whose Hebrew name means Shield of Abraham.

Isacsohn was sickly in his later years, relying on a portable oxygen tank and being chauffeured everywhere by his son-in-law. When the old rabbi died 15 years ago, Low was named to wear his mantle, although synagogue members said he was reluctant to take over.

“Whatever social life he had was totally sublimated in devotion to Rabbi Isacsohn, and when he died (the founders) turned to him,” the lawyer said. “He didn’t want to accept the responsibility of becoming the spiritual leader, and the older generation said, ‘No, we need you.’ And he’s reiterated over the years publicly and privately, ‘I’m here reluctantly, but I’m here and will do the job the best I can.’ ”

Ten years ago Low opened one of the most imposing synagogues in Los Angeles, with a sanctuary on the ground floor, a catering hall above and a ritual bath in the back. Morning prayers start at 6:30 and study sessions go until late into the night.

With a membership of more than 100 families, the congregation was devoted to the strict observance of Jewish law and tradition in the Hassidic style.

On the Sabbath and on holidays, bearded congregants can be seen walking to the synagogue in the silk robes, long black coats and round fur hats that mark traditional Hassids, a sort of urban Amish whose garb recalls the 18th-Century heyday of their faith.

Others wear simple hats and business suits. The women cover their hair with wigs as a sign of modesty, and children follow in droves.

To carry on the tradition of Torah scholarship, Low founded a day school that now has 1,000 students, many of them on scholarships, and brought in scholars from Israel and the East Coast to staff the talmudical academy.

Both were expensive propositions.

Low also was committed to a generous program of charity for poor Jews in the Fairfax District.

He collected large sums and spent them on food, housing and scholarships, funded by a flow of contributions from congregation members, many of whom were deeply involved in the real estate business.

Low’s financial deficit--which has been estimated at $18 million--apparently began with the collapse of property values three years ago.

The synagogue itself, held in the name of his late mother-in-law, was at risk and so were a pair of nearby apartment buildings that housed the talmudic scholars and their large families.

Individual members of the synagogue stepped in to bail out the synagogue and the academy, but apartment house dormitories bought by Low reverted to their previous owners.

Even Andrew Friedman, the president of a splinter group that left Mogen Abraham, praises Low as a man who has “helped more individuals in Los Angeles and throughout the world than any rabbi that I know.”

Some members of Friedman’s newly founded Beis Naftali synagogue may have left because of the turmoil at Mogen Abraham, Friedman said in a telephone interview from Israel, but “aside from his business problems, quote unquote, people do respect him a lot.”

BACKGROUND

Judaism’s Hasidic movement dates to the middle of the 18th Century, when followers of an itinerant preacher known as the Ba’al Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name) spoke to the yearnings of the poor and uneducated Jewish masses of Eastern Europe. They had been disappointed after Shabbetai Tsevi, a false messiah who captured the popular imagination, converted to Islam. Relying on the mystical teachings of the Kabbalah, the Hasidic thinkers emphasized the importance of an individual’s communion with God and came up with a new concept of religious leadership--the charismatic and mystically motivated tsadik, or righteous man. The followers founded “courts” or schools of their own, handing down authority from father to son or son-in-law, and clashed with mainline religious Orthodoxy as their following grew. Many Hasidic Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. After the war, survivors re-established Hasidic dynasties in Israel and the United States.