Who needs the Waldorf?

A wealthy inmate was allowed to host a lavish bar mitzvah behind bars for his son at the downtown lockup known as the Tombs, The Post has learned.

The proud papa, Tuvia Stern, is a financial-scam artist who jumped bail and spent nearly 20 years on the lam.

City Correction Department officials permitted him to use his own caterer, who supplied kosher food, china, forks — and knives — for about 60 guests who partied and danced the hora for six hours in the jailhouse gym.

Stern’s family and friends were allowed to keep their cellphones — normally a huge security no-no. And Stern was given the OK to dress in clothing appropriate for the occasion.

The guest list at the jail included several prominent rabbis as well as Yaakov Shwekey, a popular Orthodox singer, and a band.

The city threw in its own present — overtime pay for the correction officers staffing the soiree.

The Dec. 30 bash was so successful that jailbird Stern chose the same venue four months later for his daughter Breindy’s engagement party for 10 family members, sources said.

Shame-faced Correction officials yesterday quietly disciplined five top employees, including a rabbi and an imam, for signing off on the bar mitzvah.

“I’ve never seen, in my career, anything as stupid as this,” said a Department of Correction insider about the bar mitzvah, which was permitted over the objections of at least one jail official. “It’s outrageous what transpired.”

Correction Commissioner Martin Horn was “livid” and “views the events as a spectacularly gross error of judgment up and down the command chain,” said a department source.

Horn suspended Rabbi Leib Glanz, the correction chaplain who arranged the bar mitzvah, for two weeks.

Four other officials were stripped of two weeks of vacation.

They include the assistant commissioner for ministerial services, Imam Umar Abdul-Jamil.

Abdul-Jamil had been suspended for two weeks in 2006 after The Post revealed that he had given a speech referring to “Zionists of the media” and “terrorists” in the White House.

The other department officials losing vacation pay are Tombs warden George Okada, and two chiefs, Peter Curcio and Frank Squillante. Department spokesman Stephen Morello said only that Horn “took immediate disciplinary action” after an internal probe was completed.

A source said all Jewish inmates were moved out of the Tombs yesterday for unknown reasons.

Stern, a Brooklyn native who had been a fugitive in Brazil for nearly two decades, was shipped to an upstate prison days after the engagement party to begin a sentence for bail jumping and grand larceny.

He went on the lam in 1989 after he was busted for swindling $1.7 million.

Glanz and Abdul-Jamil both declined to comment. The other three officials could not be reached.

Additional reporting by Selim Algar, Reuven Fenton and Candace Amos

dan.mangan@nypost.com