Antisemitic Rabbi Who Became a Priest (Maybe)

"Rabbi puts head through glass door and disappears," reads a 1923 headline. The news story that followed, which took place in New York City on Feb. 19 of that year, is the one fixed point in the life story of Rabbi Judah Elfenbein. His life before that day is shrouded in mystery and befuddled by conflicting accounts. His life after that day is equally mysterious. The glass door in question was the exit route from a disciplinary hearing held in New York City by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of Canada. Elfenbein was charged with being none other than Father Stanislaus Tillinger, a Greek Orthodox priest who had testified in an Austrian court that Jews use Christian blood to make matzo, and subsequently sent an innocent man to prison. Universally dubbed the 'rav m'shumad' ("apostate rabbi") by the Yiddish media, Elfenbein tearfully confessed and swore never again to work as a rabbi.