MURDER IN THE SYNAGOGUE

Hardback. During a service in Congregation Shaaey Zedek, Rabbi Morris Adler was assassinated by a brilliant student who protested the moralities of a changing society. On the morning of Lincoln's birthday, 1966, 23yr old Richard Wishnetsky stood on the 'binah' of Detroit's Congregation Shaarey Zedek. After reading a brief statement condemning the congregation as a "travesty and an abomination," he used a sawed-off Colt.32 revolver to assassinate Rabbi Morris Adler, one of the nation's most prominent religious leaders. He then shot himself through the had. A tape recorder that was being used to record the Rabbi's sermon captured the episode in all its appalling detail. The tape was reproduced on news broadcasts coast-to-coast, provoking shock and incredulity. Not only did the murder-suicide appear wholly without motive, but also, as the known facts emerged, Richard Wishnetsky hardly seemed the sort who would be driven to senseless violence. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan and a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship recipient, Richard was known to be a devoted admirer of Rabbi Adler! Shortly after that fateful winter morning, the author began interviewing literally hundreds of those who had known Rabbi Adler and Richard. Slowly patterns began to emerge, and this book is the result: an insightful, dramatic, and remarkable double portrait of murderer and victim. The author illuminates how one door after another - religion, psychiatry, education, and friendship - closed on Richard, leaving violence as his only alternative; and why Rabbi Adler came to appear as the logical and rightful target of Richard's deepest rage. With Epilogue. 381pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Vg. in G+ pcdw. A fairly heavy book which may require additional postage.