Yabbai

“He was a very bad man who tried to get me killed,” Mr Simentov, 45, said with a grin as he warmed his toes against the Kabul winter on a gas-burning stove. “Now I am the Jew here, I am the boss.”

A feud ensued, with the Taleban regime becoming involved after both men reported each other to the authorities for alleged wrongdoings ranging from running a brothel to misappropriating religious objects.
Mr Levin told fortunes to Muslim women and prescribed medicines and love potions, which Mr Simentov disapproved of as non-Jewish. He reported Mr Levin to the authorities who jailed him. Mr Simentov claims that he was jailed and tortured by the Taleban when Mr Levin told them that he was an Israeli spy. The animosity may have cost the synagogue its most sacred treasure — its Torah scroll, confiscated by the Taleban sometime around 1999. The 500-year-old scroll, hand-written on deerskin and wrapped in silk, was believed to be worth $2 million (£1.06 million).