The Rabbi and the Hit Man: A True Tale of Murder, Passion, and Shattered Faith

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Summary: Sacred Testimony
Review: Arthur J. Magida's The Rabbi and the Hitman is "sacred testimony" in the most literal sense. The book bears witness to the brutal murder of the beautiful Carol Neulander, a kind and gentle soul. It methodically incriminates her murderer and husband, the evil Fred Neulander, the first rabbi in America to be convicted of murder. Although the book is skillfully written and reads like a novel, it is not easy reading, for to read this book is to confront evil cloaked within a supposed "man of G-d." To read this book is to have one's heart break and tear for Carol and her many loved ones. Inasmuch as human life is of infinite value, one who murders has committed the infinite and ulitimate evil, so I continue to pray that G-d avenge this murder both in this world and in the next. May He continue to comfort Carol's family almost one decade after her death, and may her life be a source of inspiration to us all.

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Summary: 'TRUE EVIL & SAVAGERY"
Review: NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK -- 5/30/2003
Inside A Killer Rabbi
Chronicling the life and trials of the first American rabbi convicted of murder.
Sandee Brawarsky - Jewish Week Book Critic

Arthur J. Magida is a journalist who has looked deeply into the soul of Louis Farrakhan. Now he's done the same with that of Rabbi Fred Neulander, who was convicted in January of murdering his wife.
"I think the fundamental thread that links them is an immense, almost incomprehensible sense of grandiosity. They are both men who deem themselves beyond the constraints and truth of the faith they say they espouse," the author "Prophet of Rage: A Life of Louis Farrakhan and His Nation" and other books tells The Jewish Week.
Magida's latest book, The Rabbi and the Hit Man: A True Tale of Murder, Passion, and the Shattered Faith of a Congregation (HarperCollins), fills in the story behind the headlines of the 1994 killing of Carol Neulander, and the two trials that led to her husband's conviction; Rabbi Neulander is serving a life sentence. The book fits into the genre of true crime, but it is also thoughtfully anchored in the story of the American Jewish community and the changing role of the rabbi.
The details of this case are not for the squeamish. This is true evil and savagery..... Magida's style is compelling. For him, perhaps the greatest challenge in writing the book "was keeping my own anger at Fred in check. The more I discovered about him, the more horrible the anecdotes became, the angrier I got and the angrier the prose got. I realized that I was writing an anti-Fred screed, that my own moral impulses were coming out."

Rating:
Summary: Want a reason to pull an all-nighter?
Review: This book should come with a disclaimer: Read only on a weekend when you don't have early morning plans.
Magida effectively portrays Fred Neulander as the rabbi from hell: a sociopath who breaks every possible commandment while abusing the trust of his congregation and community, not to mention his profession. That Neulander meets up with Janoff, the hitman, is tragic karma for Janoff, the classic loser, who is easily manipulated by this evil man. Had the two not met, Neulander would have found some other mechanism through which to kill Carol.
This book demonstrates Magida's journalistic skill. He does not moralize but rather salts his narrative with quotes from Jewish sources that leading the reader to conclude that Neulander's lifelong behavior and choices represent an inversion of normative Jewish values and ethics.
I hope that Magida sells the film rights to this book to a foreign director. I don't know if an American could capture the sense of "film noir" that the story demands.