Four Days in November
The followers of the late Meir Kahane may be called deluded and a lot of other things, and they would constitute a genuine threat to society if they weren’t, as a group, so ineffectual. But none of those is a capital offense.
It’s more than a little disturbing that federal prison authorities allowed Earl Krugel, the California Jewish Defense League figure convicted of a failed 2001 bomb plot, to be murdered in prison just three days into his 20-year sentence. Given the timing and precedent, it’s downright alarming. As Seamus McGraw reports on Page 1, Krugel’s death came three years to the day after his co-defendant, JDL leader Irv Rubin, suffered the jailhouse injuries that led to his death — supposedly by suicide, though friends and detractors alike have found that hard to believe.
Odder still, their deaths are separated by only one day — and a decade — from the assassination of Kahane himself on November 5, 1990.
As we write this, the world is still mourning the death by assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995. Make of it what you will.
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
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