(Unidentified Hasid on Perp Walk)
Along with the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus and two state assemblymen, five rabbis were taken into custody today as part of an FBI investigation of corruption and international money laundering.
This case has everything: corrupt politicos, Sopranos-esque intrigue and some dude who trades organs for cash (cue the totally inappropriate Shylock references).
And caught square in the middle of the whole tangled, tangled web is Saul Kassin, the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community of the United States and son of Chief Rabbi Jacob Kassin (who died in 1994), an influential Brooklyn religious leader who increased the Brooklyn Sephardic community tenfold during his tenure.
Apparently, Kassin Junior used to be an upstanding member of the community—spearheading an effort to make yeshiva education free for Jewish children by asking the members of the Sephardic National Alliance to donate five percent of their net worth to an educational fund. At the time, colleagues called Kassin “a man of great strength, vision and integrity.”
Unfortunately, his new financial endeavor is likely to gain him a whole new set of descriptors—and I’m guessing that the ADL wouldn’t approve of any of them.
This is like the climax of a Michael Chambon novel…
Bernie Madoff needs to see a haimish ponem.
We need to start selling organs on our website. It seems quite lucrative.