The 1-grand rabbi - Shul offers $1,000 for stolen dollar bill

It's such a blessed buck, it's actually worth $1,000 -- and it may be floating somewhere in a Florida waterway.

The Chabad House-Lubavitch of Palm Beach is offering a $1,000 reward -- no questions asked -- for the safe return of the $1 bill that was stolen Tuesday night during a burglary at the synagogue.

The thief, caught on surveillance camera, stole a special donation box at the Chabad center that included the bill, considered sacred because it was blessed by the movement's late grand rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

During the late 1980s, Schneerson was known for handing out dollar bills to thousands of visitors who'd line up for hours on Sundays outside his Crown Heights, Brooklyn, headquarters to greet him.

Before heading to Florida in 1987 to open the center, Rabbi Shlomo Ezagui said he received one of the coveted bills from Schneerson with instructions that it be taped inside a charity box and displayed at the center. The bill has written on it blessings Schneerson gave during the meeting, which Ezagui wrote down.

Ezagui said the bill, which has remained in the box ever since, is "priceless" to the center.

"It represented the soul and great energy of the rebbe," he said. "Everything else can be replaced."

A surveillance camera showed an intruder breaking through a window and stealing charity boxes and a cash register with hundreds of dollars.

Local police investigating the incident didn't return messages yesterday, but Ezagui said cops told him the thief was caught and confessed to stealing the money to pay off a drug dealer.

The wooden box with the taped $1 bill was then tossed by the dealer into the Intracoastal Waterway, Ezagui said he learned from cops.

The rabbi said he's hoping the box will eventually be recovered with the blessed bill intact.