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Rabbi Alvin Kass, longest-serving NYPD chaplain famed for 9/11 response, dies at 89
Less than a week after rushing to Ground Zero as a police chaplain on 9/11, Rabbi Alvin Kass led Rosh Hashanah services — not only for his Brooklyn congregation but at a makeshift synagogue at LaGuardia Airport for emergency responders who had flooded into New York City after the terrorist attacks.
“It was,” he would later say, “the most meaningful religious service in my career.”
Kass died Tuesday at 89 as the longest-serving chaplain in the New York Police Department, with a career that included responses to global terrorism, local violence and the intimate needs of police officers — as well as a hostage crisis that he famously resolved with a non-kosher pastrami sandwich.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Kass attended Camp Ramah before enrolling at Columbia University in 1953. His freshman-year roommates there were Robert Alter, who would become a preeminent translator of the Bible, and Shalom Schwartz, later a leading psychologist in Israel.
After graduating from college, he earned both a doctorate from New York University and ordination as a Conservative rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America before joining the U.S. Air Force as a chaplain. Returning stateside, he took a pulpit in Queens before being urged to join the city’s police department as a chaplain.
At the time, he was only the third Jewish chaplain to work for the NYPD. He would become its longest-serving and the first three-star chaplain, working under eight mayors and 21 police chiefs, while also helming the East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue in Brooklyn, for 36 years until 2014.
The NYC Benevolent Association called Kass “a true pillar of the NYPD” in a Facebook post mourning him. “Every time we bowed our heads for one of his prayers, we appreciated his deep faith, his old-school wit and his unshakable devotion to the men and women who protect NYC,” the group said. “He was a champion of all that is good and noble about our profession. May his memory be a blessing.”
NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, mourned Kass in a statement following his death. She noted that he was the youngest chaplain in the department’s history when he came on at age 30.
“Nearly six decades later, he remained its spiritual heart — a source of strength, guidance, and faith for generations of police officers and their families,” Tisch said, adding, “His loss is immeasurable. His example is everlasting.”
Within the NYPD, Kass was responsible for the spiritual care of all officers but especially the thousands who are Jewish. Kass successfully advocated for the right of Jewish police officers not to work on Shabbat and major Jewish holidays while also serving as the primary Jewish figure for Jewish officers who were otherwise unaffiliated with Jewish communities. He also served as spiritual director of the Shomrim Society, a fraternal organization for Jewish police officers.
“The main responsibility for a spiritual leader is to bring all people closer together, including those of your own faith,” he told the New York Jewish Week when he was honored as one of “36 to Watch” in 2024. “I feel particularly proud that the Shomrim Society embraces Jews of all backgrounds and points of view. The organization is a paragon of the unity that ought to bind all Jews together.”
NYPD Chief Chaplain Rabbi Alvin Kass receiving the Medal of Honor at the 23rd annual Ellis Island Medals of Honor ceremony and gala on Ellis Island, New York City, May 9, 2009. (George Napolitano/Getty Images)
After the terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, Kass reported to Ground Zero, where he encountered a police officer he described as “crying like a baby” as well as the families of officers who were unaccounted for. Later, he attended the funerals of ever police officer who was killed that day, including two who were Jewish.
“I told their families that you’re supposed to say ‘Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, dayan ha emet’: Blessed is the Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who is a judge of truth, or truthful judge. This means, essentially, that He knows what He’s doing. We don’t,” Kass wrote in an essay for The Forward on the 20th anniversary of the attack.
“We can’t comprehend what He’s doing very often, but presumably He knows what he is doing, and we submit. We bow our head to what is often inscrutable and incomprehensible, and we accept it with a measure of faith and hope,” he continued. “That really is the essential message of Judaism, in the face of evil.”
Kass would later say that 9/11 marked a transition in the role of the chaplain within the NYPD, peeling back some of the stigma that had been associated with seeking spiritual care in a department where machismo was long the currency.
Kass’ own encounters on the job ranged from lofty to the low-brow. He was pulled away from his son’s bar mitzvah celebration to tend to an officer who had been shot, according to a 2006 profile in the Columbia alumni magazine. On another occasion he flew upstate between Friday night services and Shabbat morning services to inform a family that their officer son had been murdered.
One of Kass’s more famous escapades came in 1981 when he was called in to negotiate with a Jewish man who had taken a woman hostage.
“I talked to him all night to give up his gun,” Kass recalled in a 2012 interview with the Wall Street Journal, neither the first nor last time he would recount the incident. “I was an utter failure. But by morning he was hungry.”
The hostage team ordered pastrami sandwiches from the (nonkosher) Carnegie Deli for the hostage-taker and for Kass. Kass traded one overstuffed sandwich for the man’s gun — but it turned out he had another. Kass, who ate only kosher meat, had not touched his sandwich and persuaded the man to accept it in exchange for the other gun. The police swooped in and ended the crisis.
The NYPD commissioner noted the incident when promoting Kass to three-star chief in 2016, saying, “In a feat that has become legendary, you were able to trade two pastrami sandwiches for the man’s two guns.”
But for Kass, whose small stature added to a widespread impression of modesty, the real feat came not in his ability to disarm the hostage-taker but in the man’s appetite. “Have you seen the sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli?” he recalled. “They’re huge.”
Kass is survived by his three children and three grandchildren. He was married for 54 years to Miryom Kass, an educator, until her death in 2017. Speaking at the 2016 ceremony marking 50 years with the NYPD, Kass said about Miryom, “She has been by confidant, my partner, my co-worker, she’s been my inspiration, she’s been my chaplain.”
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The post Rabbi Alvin Kass, longest-serving NYPD chaplain famed for 9/11 response, dies at 89 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ran Gvili, last remaining Israeli hostage in Gaza, featured on 2 Times Square digital billboards
(JTA) — Commuters in Times Square were confronted this week with a new digital billboard demanding the release of the final remaining hostage in Gaza, Ran Gvili.
“Hamas must release him now,” the billboard reads next to a photo of Gvili. “The last Israeli hostage held in Gaza.”
Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer who was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim during Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, was one of roughly 250 hostages taken into Gaza.
The billboard, which is part of an effort led by the Israeli Consulate in New York and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, comes nearly two months after all 20 living hostages were returned to Israel as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Since then, the remaining deceased hostages in Gaza have been returned intermittently, including the remains of Thai agricultural worker Sudthisak Rinthalak last week, in a slow process that has extended tensions between Israel and Hamas.
Last month, the American Jewish Committee launched its own billboard campaign in Times Square that featured a montage of the remaining hostages in Gaza. Today, the display only features Gvili.
“The nightmare isn’t over,” the AJC’s billboard reads, according to a video the group posted on Youtube Tuesday, followed by a photo of Gvili’s mother holding a hostage poster of him with the caption, “A family incomplete.”
Later in the slideshow, the screen displays a photo of Gvili with the caption, “Over two years later, Hamas still holds Ran hostage in Gaza,” before ending with the message, “Bring Ran home now.”
As the number of hostages has dwindled and the weekly hostage rallies have come to a close, Gvili’s parents have become the only hostage family members in the public eye.
“We’re at the last stretch and we have to be strong, for Rani, for us, and for Israel. Without Rani, our country can’t heal,” Gvili’s mother, Talik, told Reuters on Monday.
Once Gvili is returned, the ceasefire plan is supposed to move into its second phase as laid out in a plan devised by President Donald Trump this fall.
Trump has said phase two is imminent. But while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters Sunday he expects the plan to move into its second phase “very shortly,” Hamas political bureau member Husam Badran said on Tuesday that Israel had not yet honored its part of the deal, pointing to the continued closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt. (Israel has said the crossing will open soon to allow Palestinians to exit Gaza.)
Both Israel and Hamas would lose authority in Gaza during the next phase of Trump’s plan, which would establish a “Board of Peace” helmed by Trump to make decisions about Gaza’s future. It is expected that the Palestinian Authority will play a role in the board, which Israeli officials have said they oppose, and Hamas will face renewed pressure to disarm, which it does not want to do.
Some have speculated that Hamas knows the location of Gvili’s remains but has not released them to avoid bringing the hostage-release phase of the ceasefire to an end. That leaves him and his story of Oct. 7 heroism in the public eye for longer.
“We will not forget for a single moment Ran Gvili, an Israeli hero. Even with an injured shoulder, Ran went out to defend and repel the Hamas monsters who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023,” said Ofir Akunis, the consul general of Israel in New York, in a statement about the Times Square billboard. “Israel demands that Hamas fully complete Phase A before we proceed to the beginning of Phase B of President Trump’s plan.”
The post Ran Gvili, last remaining Israeli hostage in Gaza, featured on 2 Times Square digital billboards appeared first on The Forward.
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Qatar’s Sudden Moral Outrage on Gaza Reconstruction Rings Hollow
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani speaks on the first day of the 23rd edition of the annual Doha Forum, in Doha, Qatar, December 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Qatar delivered one of the most revealing geopolitical moments of the year when its prime minister, Mohammed Abdulrahman Al Thani, announced that Doha will not pay to rebuild Gaza.
The irony is extraordinary. Qatar, the same state that hosted Hamas’ top leadership for more than a decade, financed Gaza’s bureaucracy, and positioned itself as Hamas’ indispensable diplomatic back channel, now insists it bears no responsibility for the consequences of the very organization it nurtured.
The sudden rediscovery of fiscal restraint would be amusing if the implications weren’t so revealing.
What Doha is attempting is not moral clarity. It is narrative control. By refusing to participate in reconstruction, Qatar avoids the unavoidable admission that its financial, political, and media patronage strengthened the organization that triggered the current war.
If Gaza was “destroyed,” as Qatari officials tirelessly proclaim, then a basic question follows: destroyed in response to what? Hamas executed the October 7 massacre, built an underground fortress of tunnels, stockpiled rockets in civilian zones, and systematically transformed Gaza into a militarized enclave. These were not accidental byproducts of governance. They were deliberate investments — and Qatar was Hamas’ most generous financial sponsor.
The record is not a matter of political interpretation. US Treasury designations, UN reports, and major independent investigations have repeatedly documented that Qatar-based donors, charities, and intermediaries supported Hamas, alongside Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Mali. Qatari individuals sanctioned by the United States have also raised funds for Jabhat al-Nusra (HTS).
These findings are not Israeli claims; they originate from American counterterrorism authorities and multilateral bodies.
Yet Qatar continues to brand itself as a humanitarian benefactor to Gaza. In practice, its “relief payments” repeatedly functioned as political leverage: money that sustained Hamas’ rule and relieved the organization of basic governing responsibilities, all while allowing Doha to posture as a benevolent mediator.
Meanwhile, other regional powers have made their terms clear regarding Gaza reconstruction. The UAE and Saudi Arabia insist that any reconstruction of Gaza must be tied to a political framework that prevents Hamas from reconstituting itself. Qatar, by contrast, has spent years cultivating an outcome in which Hamas survives as a viable actor, preserving Doha’s influence and its role as a necessary mediator.
If Hamas’ military infrastructure is dismantled, Qatar is left with a failed investment and is now eager to disclaim responsibility for the outcome.
This dynamic is not new. For more than a decade, Qatar and Iran have served as parallel financial engines for Islamist militant groups across the region, using state funds, quasi-state charities, and well-connected private donors to support this activity. Western governments long tolerated the arrangement because Qatar hosts a major US air base, commands immense energy wealth, and uses its media empire to shape regional debate. But the mask is slipping. Doha’s attempt to distance itself from the consequences of its own policy choices exposes a contradiction it can no longer conceal.
This leads to the essential question: who still takes Qatar’s moral lectures seriously?
A state that sheltered Hamas’ leadership now claims neutrality. A state whose sanctioned donors aided extremist networks now positions itself as a humanitarian authority. A state that spent years empowering the group responsible for one of the worst atrocities in modern history now refuses to help rebuild the territory devastated by that group’s actions.
The world should stop pretending not to see the pattern. Qatar’s diplomatic theater cannot hide the facts. The Emirate has influence, resources, and global reach. What it lacks, despite its insistence, is credibility.
Sabine Sterk is CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.
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How the Palestinian Authority Encourages Children to Die for Allah
A group of Palestinian children being taught that Israel will be destroyed. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
Instead of encouraging children to reach heights in education and contribute something positive in their lives, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education continues to indoctrinate children to see dying for Allah – Shahada (Martyrdom) – as the great ideal.
This child abuse was once again highlighted last week during celebrations of the UN’s “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
The Tulkarem Directorate of Education proudly posted photos on Facebook — taken at the school events — of children holding signs glorifying Martyrdom.
One sign portrayed Martyrs as smelling sweeter than a jasmine flower:
“How could a jasmine not envy a homeland that smells of Martyrs?” [Tulkarem Directorate of Education, Facebook page, Dec. 2, 2025]
Another sign proclaimed: “We will live like soaring eagles, and we will die like proud lions; we are all for the homeland and we are all for Palestine.”
These slogans encapsulate the PA’s indoctrination that Martyrdom, even for children, is not tragic or regrettable, but something beautiful, fragrant, and desirable. The PA is encouraging violence, and glorifying the murder of Jews.
Other posters held by students featured the PA map of “Palestine,” which erases Israel and displays the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestinian land:
One sign was accompanied by the slogan: “The compass will never deviate from the path and will continue to point towards Palestine.”
Other students carried large symbolic keys, representing the so-called “right of return,” which the PA teaches is an inevitable immigration to all of Israel’s cities and towns of nearly six million Arab descendants of so-called “refugees.”
The message to the children is that Israel has no right to exist and that the national mission, or “the path,” remains the elimination of Israel.
The events were attended by high-level PA officials, including Tulkarem Education Directorate Director-General Mazen Jarrar, Tulkarem District representative Rasha Sabah, and Fatah Movement Tulkarem Branch Secretary Iyad Jarrad.
These official PA education events, which glorify violence, romanticize Martyrdom, erase Israel from the map, and instill lifelong hatred towards Israel, are all part of the ongoing PA campaign to ensure that the next generation denies Israel’s right to exist and is willing to fight and seek death to achieve its goals.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.