Robbing people of their Yiddishkeit and their money, a Christian missionary masquerading as a chareidi rabbi and doubling as a con artist forging fake giyur certificates for huge sums, Ariel Katzenberg was exposed, leading batei din to change and enhance their security measures.

Yad L’Achim has revealed the identity of a Christian missionary masquerading as a chareidi rabbi. The impersonator, Ariel Katzenberg, started out in Bnei Brak and then moved to Harish, Migdal and elsewhere in the north, where he led a double life.

In his guise as a rabbi, he performed weddings and giyurim, and gave Torah classes. However, he was also caught on film performing baptisms and converting Yidden to Christianity.

Yad L’Achim has succeeded in documenting Katzenberg’s fraudulent activities, which include submitting forged papers to rabbinical courts. Focusing his efforts on tourists from abroad, the con artist extracted huge sums of money from his innocent victims, leaving them penniless and unable to pay for lodging or continued travel.

According to first-hand accounts reaching Yad L’Achim, Katzenberg offered foreigners “assistance” in obtaining documents attesting to their supposed conversion or officially recognizing their Judaism. In exchange for tens of thousands of shekels, he manufactured documents bearing forged seals from well-known courts, and even claimed that the foreigners had undergone official conversion in Eretz Yisroel.

“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.

In recent months, Katzenberg also managed to infiltrate official circles, meeting face-to-face with senior officials and rabbonim.

After Katzenberg’s exposure as a fraud, the courts were forced to take dramatic action. Among other things, they began issuing new conversion certificates, safeguarded by advanced security technologies and identifying marks, to protect against forgery.

A Yad L’Achim official concluded: “The technique of impersonation and deception is well-known and typical among missionaries. The con artist in this case went to great measures to hunt down innocent victims and convert them to their religion. We will continue to pursue the missionaries wherever they are, by all legitimate means, and stymie their efforts to lead Yidden astray.”