Customer Reviews

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

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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.

This one of those books that keeps you up all night and forces you to read it from cover to cover. As the layers of truth are peeled off, one by one, the story gets more and more fascinating and gruesome. The author has done a magnificent job of not only objectively describing the events, but, even more, of capturing the shock of an entire community and family as they begin to recognize the kind of monster they had been living with and deifying.

I lived in the Philadelphia area when this story broke back in '94. The Rabbi always looked guilty--but I moved away before the story really got good. This book filled me in on what I missed and what a story it is. A fascinating story, filled with absorbing and tragic characters. I thought the book, while well researched, was not well written. The structure is a bit sloppy and some the stories that appear as interludes are only tangentially related (like someone who knew someone who vaguely remembered Neulander in the '60s). I might have chosen a more straight forward narrative, but oh well...the story carries the day. And finally, justice.

Living in the Philadlphia area I am very familiar with the Neulander case. I was hoping for a more objective and less sensationalistic account of the murder than that presented in the local media. Magida presents exactly that however, an overly simplistic, unsophisticated and extremely prejudiced account of the murder. It's as though Magida, as a jew, cannot accept the fact that another jew could possibly commit such an act. He feels he must repeatedly vilify Nulender to reasure the reader that judaism is sound despite this individuals mis-deeds. To say that his continuous incrimination of Neulander is monotonous is an understatement. In fact it is condescending. I got the message the first hundred times that Neulander is a despicable human being, a fact I happen to agree with. What I expected was more insight into his psyche. To find out what makes him tick and what his real motives were. I am also irritated on how he portrayed the women he was involved with as innocent babes in the woods. Women with seemingly no will of their own who were victims of Neulander's advances. Were they not complicit in the adulterous afairs, all except one having spouses of their own? The book is factually accurate,however his political correctness and overstatement of the obvious nauseated me.

Like other reviewers here, I used to live near the epicenter of the Neulander case. I remember when the murder happened and I remember the "scandal" when Ken Garland's widow was unmasked as "the other woman." It was one of those cases that makes soap operas seem like documentaries. I moved away before the trials and it wasn't until I caught I rerun of City Confidential that I sought out this book.

I'm glad I did. Magida clearly comes at this case from the angle of how could a man who has committed his life to a higher ideal come to this? And, what is the impact on those who looked to this man for guidance? He makes it clear that becoming a rabbi was a career choice for Neulander, as opposed to a calling. He was highly successful and respected. Yet it wasn't enough. Magida presents convincing evidence that Neulander was a serial philanderer who needed the thrill of an illicit affair to feel "real".

Far more chilling is the revelation that Neulander seems to have sought Carol's death so that he could marry either a wealthy widow or a wealthy divorcee. He wasn't driven by passion for a woman, he wanted to keep up with the neighbors. Magida points out the irony of a rabbi who has founded a synagogue that emphasizes ethics over ritual being so able to dispense with ethics entirely.

This book is a step above the usual paperback entry in the true crime genre. (A genre of which I am a fan.) Magida is interested in what made Neulander and how his role as a rabbi enabled him to "pass" for so long. He still delivers on the details, providing fresh information on Len Jenoff's antics in Baltimore, while thoughtfully probing how Neulander abused his position and those who trusted him. It's an easy read that will stay with you.

Kindle notes: no photographs or searchable terms.

Elaine, Debby, Rachel, Ann, Victoria--Rabbi Fred Neulander does not have time to grieve for his newly dead/murdered frumpy cake baking wife Carol. He has several girlfriends he must take care of.

Everything is falling apart. The police seem to think he had Carol killed, his temple wants him out and all the girlfriends have found out about each other.

FAT Len Jenoff appears on the scene and tells police the good rabbi paid him and Paul Daniels $18,000 to kill Carol.

It took 2 trials but all three were found guilty and are in different prisons in New Jersey.

But --I just read on net site CRIMESIDER (cbs news) June 30, 2009 that Jenoff now states that he lied and Fred DID NOT pay him to kill Carol. What happens now? I honestly don't know. The article ended with no closure. Go to Google and type in Fred Nuelander and you will find the Sider article.

Carol was a good woman, a great mother and owned her own bakery. Fred thought her to simple for him even though she had been born into a wealthy home and had more advantages than him.

He is disgusting. Fred is 5'6" and a giant in his own mind. Fred was not a rabbi because of his beliefs. He was one because he thought it was a good career choice. He was not a GODLY MAN.

I don't believe Jenoff. He says prosecutors promised him 5yrs to testify against Fred. That did not happen. He was given much more time. So now he wants to change his story. Jenoff has been lying since the day he was born.

This book is a great read. It details Carol and Fred's childhood, courtship, married life, kids, her death and his trials. They said it was on COURT TV and it was a media circus. I wish I had seen it.

Fred, I hope soon you will be swimming with the gefilte fishes.

Please read this book.

I saw part of Neulander's second trial on CourtTV last fall and thought he was guilty then; this book only confirms that opinion. This book is very readable and hard to put down. I would like to have known more about the victim, the rabbi's wife. This book only goes to show once more than truth is stranger (and a lot more interesting) than fiction, and nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Overshadowed in the headlines of 1994 by an ex-football player murdering his wife and her friend, Rabbi Fred Neulander unhatched an equally devious plot. This serial philanderer, in order to marry a girlfriend, sought the murder of his wife. In an easy flowing style, Arthur Magida tells this story in "The Rabbi and the Hitman".

Not being familiar with many of the Jewish customs, I appreciated Magida's explanations of landmark dates on the Jewish calendar as the story was told. Neulander had several love interests outside of his marriage that he used to make his congregation develop. A man with "people skills", Neulander was believed to be a great rabbi and builder of a thriving synagogue community. This all changed when his wife was murdered. In a murder-for-hire scheme, Neulander may have never been convicted had the hitman not confessed.

This book is a truly fascinating tale of the Jewish fate of one deceitful rabbi. It was apparent from the beginning that Neulander was not a rabbi for the right motives. For this reason, his murderous crime should not be an implication of all rabbis.

Arthur Magida has done a fantastic job of bringing the details and motivations behind a shocking crime to light. Far more than a journalist's recounting of events, the author sheds valuable insight on the meaning of faith, congregation, community, and spiritual leadership. He skillfully weaves the facts of the crime and investigation with the disturbing details of the Rabbi's narcissistic, sociopathic personality traits. The reader is taken inside the congregation and made to understand how Rabbi Neulander captivated an entire congregation, seduced several of its members, and came to believe he was above the laws of man. A captivating story from beginning to end that forces us to look inside and to question those in whom we place our faith and trust.

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."