After Jailhouse Bar Mitzvah, Rabbi Is Fined for Accepting a Gift

Michael *on for The New York TimesRabbi Leib Glanz, 53, was fined $2,500 for accepting an engraved silver kiddush cup and plate.

If you can't bring the father to the bar mitzvah boy, then bring the bar mitzvah boy to the father.

That was the thinking behind the plan to hold a jailhouse celebration for the son of Tuvia Stern. Mr. Stern was being held on fraud charges, and his bid for a furlough to attend the 2008 party had been denied. (His stint as a fugitive from the case — in South America, no less — apparently gave a judge pause.)

But while the plan may have seemed straightforward enough at the time to its author, Rabbi Leib Glanz, a New York City jail chaplain, it went very much awry: the rabbi was forced to resign and was later charged with theft in an unrelated federal case. On Monday, he was fined $2,500 for accepting an engraved silver kiddush cup and plate from Mr. Stern during the bar mitzvah celebration in a Manhattan jail.

For the once powerful rabbi, a rumpled man with a graying beard who served as a broker of political favors large and small for roughly two decades, the action by New York City's Conflicts of Interest Board may seem like an added indignity, particularly because he tried to decline the silver cup, according to papers filed in connection with the fine.

The initial disclosure of the bar mitzvah inside the city's Manhattan Detention Complex led to a run of front-page stories.

The rabbi had sought and obtained approval for the bar mitzvah from several senior officials in the city's Department of Correction. In addition to Rabbi Glanz, the city's investigation of the affair led to the resignation of one official and administrative charges against against three others.

Earlier this year, the rabbi was charged with theft and conspiracy in a case in federal court in Manhattan. The charges grew out of information received by the city's Department of Investigation and were unrelated to the inquiry into the bar mitzvah, a lavish affair by jailhouse standards, with a kosher caterer and a band.

The rabbi, 53, who was charged along with his brother Menashe Glanz, faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison if convicted.

His lawyer, Alan M. Vinegrad, defended his actions.

''In arranging for the bar mitzvah of an inmate's son, Rabbi Glanz acted properly and with the best of intentions,'' Mr. Vinegrad said in a statement. ''At the bar mitzvah, the family presented him with a kiddush cup in appreciation for his efforts. Although he initially refused to accept this gift, he eventually did so to avoid offending the family. He recognizes that he should have been more forceful in refusing the kiddush cup and accepts responsibility for this error in judgment.''

The disposition in the case does not indicate whether the rabbi was required to return the cup, which the Conflict of Interest Board said was valued at about $500.