Did you see the story in early May about the murder of a
rabbi's wife in Cherry Hill, New Jersey?
In this matter, Rabbi Fred Neulander is alleged to have hired a hit man
to kill his wife. It has been said that
he was involved in numerous extra-marital affairs. Apparently the rabbi, wishing to avoid a high-profile divorce,
hired a hit man to kill Carol Neulander, who owned a bakery shop and raised
their three children. The prosecution was faced with a case that was pretty
much circumstantial until just recently when two roommates at a halfway house
for recovering alcoholics confessed to the murder, claiming to have been hired
by Rabbi Neulander.
What I want to focus
on here is one of the alleged hit men named Jenoff. Mr. Jenoff is a private investigator who had consulted with the
rabbi in 1994 after his marriage collapsed.
During one of their sessions, the rabbi told Mr. Jenoff he had a
special assignment for him. Jenoff
describes himself as a major admirer of the rabbi who would have done anything
for him. According to Jenoff he did not
know who it was the rabbi had asked him to kill. He went to where he was told and bludgeoned the woman to death. According to Jenoff, he "vomited when
he learned on the radio the next morning that the woman whose death he arranged
was Mrs. Neulander . . . I never would
have done it if I had known it was the rabbi's wife . . . I'm not a bad
person. I just did a bad thing."
What a wonderful defense.
He thinks it is much worse because it was the Rabbi’s wife? Does Jenoff become a better person depending
on who his victim is? How can he
possibly think that he is not a bad person, based on what he did? That’s how bad people are defined, they do
bad things. Good people do good
things. If you do more good things than
bad things, you're generally deemed a good person, depending on the relative
importance of the things you are doing.
I judge people on what they do, not on what they say. It is easy to consider oneself a good
person. I believe that most people go
to bed at night thinking they are good people.
That is why we need an objective code of laws and some would argue the
Ten Commandments in order to provide an objective basis of right and wrong. If you murder someone, rabbi's wife or
plumber's wife, you are vile.
I do not judge people by what they think. Often people will think evil or
inappropriate thoughts, however, as long as they do not act on them, in my book
they are OK. Jimmy Carter may not have
been proud of himself for lusting after his neighbor's wife, but that was Jimmy
being human and acknowledging his humanity.
It is one thing to lust, it is quite another to act on the lust.
In this case, Mr. Jenoff killed a woman at the request of
Rabbi Neulander. I don't need to know
much more than that to conclude that Mr. Jenoff is a bad person who has an
extremely skewed view of the difference between right and wrong and on what
makes one either a bad person or a good person.