A Lost Rabbi on The Path to Faith
4/19/24 Fred Neulander was my rabbi. He died yesterday in prison serving a life sentence for murder. He paid to have his wife killed by a disturbed congregant whom he manipulated so that he could continue an affair with another woman. But I owe him for a favor. He taught my Hebrew School confirmation class for two years between bar mitzvah and confirmation. He was always a bit of an odd fish. I remember him teaching a class on the prophets in which he said that they were mentally ill catatonics. They lived over a span of about 450 years, much more if you include Moses, who was also a prophet, so that would have been a statistically bonkers conclusion as well as a hint of his disdain for them. I remember the class of not particularly religious Jewish kids, most of them in the confirmation program voluntarily, out of interest in their Jewish identity. fairly erupting in dissent. Isaiah was mentally Ill?...