New York Pollice Rabbi Alvin Kass Gets Historic Promotion to 3-Star Chief
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — Rabbi Alvin Kass, a New York Police Department chaplain for 50 years, was promoted to three-star chief — becoming the highest-ranking chaplain ever in the department.
Kass, 80, received the promotion last week in honor of his half-century with the department. He currently serves as the NYPD’s chief chaplain, leading a staff of nine clergy of different faiths and serving about 34,000 police officers.
Kass once successfully negotiated with a Jewish man who had taken a woman hostage, getting him to agree to turn over his guns in exchange for two pastrami sandwiches. On the day of his son’s bar mitzvah, Kass went to be with the family of a Jewish police officer who had been shot and killed in the line of duty.
In June he was knocked to the ground and injured by an unknown assailant during a power walk in Brooklyn. He was not wearing a kippah at the time.
Kass is the rabbi emeritus of the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn; he had served as the spiritual leader there for three decades.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
