A man who posed for years as a Chareidi Rav in Israel, officiating at chasunos and conversions and selling mezuzos, was exposed as a Christian missionary by the Yad L’Achim organization on Tuesday.

The organization issued a statement that a man calling himself Ariel Katzenberg has been serving as a Rav for years while simultaneously performing Christian baptism ceremonies and converting Jews to Christianity.

Katzenberg, who also delivered Torah shiurim, regularly marketed himself to newcomers to Israel, offering to produce documents proving their Judaism or “conversion” to Judaism for tens of thousands of shekels.

He managed to produce documents with forged seals of well-known Batei Din, some claiming that the newcomers had undergone giyur in Israel approved by the Rabbanut.

According to Yad L’Achim, Katzenberg first began posing as a Rav in Bnei Brak but was exposed as a fraud and fled to northern Israel, to Migdal HaEmek, Harish, and Tiveria.

Yad L’Achim finally exposed Katzenberg by obtaining video footage showing him performing baptisms and presenting it to the police along with the forged documents he presented to Batei Din and demanding an investigation.

“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.

Yad Achim did not provide details of Katzenberg’s background, but from past reports, it appears that his original name is Gonzalo Cabral and he grew up in Argentina. He moved to Israel as a young man and formed a relationship with an elderly Jewish woman, telling her (falsely) that his parents cut him off and he’s all alone in the world. The woman took him into her house and treated him like a son.

Cabral took advantage of his relationship with the woman to portray himself as a Jew, using her distinctly Jewish name. He later changed his name again to Ariel Katzenberg.

His background of infiltrating the Chareidi community many years ago explains how he was capable of posing as a Rav and delivering shiurim.

Yad L’Achim did not explain why it took so long to expose Katzenberg, but it is possible that he underwent giyur in Israel, and until now, they lacked evidence that he was acting as a Christian missionary on the side.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)