Hate Crime at UES Synagogue Founded by Famed Kabbalist, Rabbi Pinto

NYPD is asking for the public’s assistance in identifying a suspect wanted in connection with an aggravated harassment incident that occurred within the confines of the Midtown North Precinct.

At the Shuva Israel synagogue at 122 East 58th Street, an unidentified male entered the premises on July 21, at approximately 7:15 p.m., inside and began recording inside the shul without authorization. Cops said he entered the main service room while religious services were in session.

The suspect shouted an unspecified antisemitic statement, causing a disruption, and then fled the synagogue on foot.

The incident is being investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force.

The suspect is described as male with dark complexion. He was last seen wearing dark colored shirt and pants and carrying a smart phone in his right hand.

A suspected hate crime at any house of worship, great or small, would similarly merit investigation.

As it happens though, Shuva Israel isn’t just any synagogue.

The Shul on East 58th Street

Occupying a four-story building mid-block between Park and Lexington Avenues, it’s one of the most renowned yet mysterious Jewish synagogues in the city, thanks to its founder and leader, a charismatic, a Kabbalist ex-con named Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto.

Born in 1973, Pinto comes from an esteemed lineage of Moroccan Jews. While his teachings draw on a number of Orthodox Jewish traditions, Pinto distinguished himself via Kabbalism, the mystical branch of Judaism dating from the 12th century that, in modern times, has captured the imagination of celebrities and business people.

Originally based in Ashdod, Israel, Rabbi Pinto—who speaks little English—came to New York in the 1990s, opening a yeshiva on East 61st Street. In 2003, his organization, Mosdat Shuva Israel, bought their present building for a reported $24 million.

In 2010, the Jewish Forward published an investigative article titled, “Revered as Business Guru, Rabbi Faces Questions About His Organization’s Finances.”

For awhile, Pinto seemed to thrive, with satellite congregations in California, Florida and elsewhere. Back in Israel however, which he’d never fully departed, the law was closing in.

A 2015 Forward story headlined, “Once Untouchable, Rabbi Pinto Faces Prison as Empire Teeters” featured a cast including “Israeli-born real estate magnates, Jewish PR Executives, accountants and lawyers”; former FBI agent Michael Grimm then running for Congress (he’d win, and serve two terms before resigning and going to federal prison for felony tax evasion); then Congressman Anthony Weiner; and “inexplicably,” basketball superstar LeBron James.

In January 2016, Pinto began a one-year prison sentence in Israel for bribery and obstruction of justice

Upon his release, unbowed, Pinto claimed that while behind bars he “wrote 15 books and 13 pamphlets, some of which are already in their second and third editions and more than two million copies have been distributed in Israel and around the world in various communities.”

Inexplicable or not, LeBron James was seen embracing the Rabbi at 2022 wedding for a son of Pinto intimate and American Eagle Outfitter CEO, Jay Schottenstein.

In December 2023, when Mayor Eric Adams was seeking counsel after the the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, he too found Rabbi Pinto.