Murder in the Synagogue

By T.V. LoCicero

On Lincoln’s birthday, 1966, a young man stood on the bimah of a multi-million dollar synagogue in suburban Detroit and, confronting his audience of 700 with the Colt .32 revolver he would soon use to commit murder and suicide, he announced:

“This congregation is a travesty and an abomination. It has made a mockery by its phoniness and hypocrisy of the beauty and spirit of Judaism. It is composed of people who on the whole make me ashamed to say that I’m a Jew. For the most part it is composed of men, women and children who care for nothing except their vain, egotistical selves. With this act I protest a humanly horrifying and hence unacceptable situation."

This true crime book is a precise and harrowing account of the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler by 23-year-old Richard Wishnetsky, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar at the University of Michigan and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow bound for the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. A troubled intellectual seeker who turned to violence as his ultimate answer, Wishnetsky knew Rabbi Adler as a learned and charismatic man of considerable veneration, one of the nation’s most prominent religious leaders. The news of the rabbi’s murder sent shock tremors to numerous communities across the U.S. and abroad.
Having interviewed hundreds of those who knew Morris Adler and Richard Wishnetsky, author T.V. LoCicero has fashioned a remarkable portrait of both victim and killer. While loved and admired by many, Rabbi Adler was also aware of a recurrent indictment from some Jewish quarters (particularly the ultra-Orthodox and the alienated young) that charged his Conservative Congregation Shaarey Zedek with leading the way in Detroit to a materialistic betrayal of true Judaic values.

At the same time LoCicero’s narrative explores Wishnetsky’s often frustrating encounters with the paradoxes and complexities of contemporary American life. Despite academic success, he failed to find answers, help or satisfaction in any of the places he searched--family, friendship, education, psychiatry and religion--and settled finally on Rabbi Adler as the appropriate target of his deepest rage.

This book is a multi-faceted window on the 1960s, one of the most turbulent and pivotal periods in the American 20th Century. About Murder in the Synagogue, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and psychiatrist Robert Coles had this to say: “I was absolutely enthralled by it. It’s one of those non-fiction novels that one simply cannot put down."

Bonus: This edition contains an excerpt from T.V. LoCicero’s Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: T.V. LoCicero
• Release date: Jun 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476287065

T.V. LoCicero

T.V. LoCicero has been writing both fiction and non-fiction across five decades. He's the author of the true crime books Murder in the Synagogue (Prentice-Hall), on the assassination of Rabbi Morris Adler, and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue. His novels include The Car Bomb and Admission of Guilt, the first two books in The Detroit im dyin Trilogy, and The Obsession and The Disappearance, the first two in The Truth Beauty Trilogy, Seven of his shorter works are now available as ebooks. These are among the stories and essays he has published in various periodicals, including Commentary, Ms. and The University Review, and in the hard-cover collections Best Magazine Articles, The Norton Reader and The Third Coast. About what he calls his “checkered past,” LoCicero says: “At one time or another I've found work as an industrial spy; a producer of concert videos for Rolling Stone's greatest singer of all time; one of the few male contributors to Gloria Steinem's Ms. Magazine; a writer of an appellate brief for those convicted in one of Detroit's most sensational drug trials; the author of a true crime book that garnered a bigger advance than a top ten best-selling American novel; a project coordinator/fundraiser for a humanities council; a small business owner; the writer/producer/director of numerous long-form documentaries; a golf course clerk; a college instructor who taught courses in advanced composition, music and poetry appreciation, introduction to philosophy, remedial English, and American Literature--all in the same term; a ghostwriter; a maker of corporate/industrial videos; a member of a highway surveying crew; a speechwriter for auto executives; a TV producer of live event specials; an editorial writer; the creator of 15-second corporate promos for the PBS series Nature; and a novelist. “There is a sense in which that last occupation was the reason for all the others. Almost anyone who's ever tried to make ends meet as a novelist knows what I'm talking about.”

Book preview

Introduction

The young man standing opposite me smiled. Then he dropped on his knees and with a dreamy look on his face told me: There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me. I feel that then they were calm and beautiful. It must be so, for I often hear people talking about them as though they were.

Franz Kafka, Conversation with the Supplicant

On a Saturday morning that was Lincoln's Birthday, 1966, in front of a gathering of over 700 people, including his parents, sister, and grandmother, Richard Wishnetsky, aged 23, stood on the altar of massive Shaarey Zedek Synagogue in suburban Detroit and read a short statement condemning the congregation as a travesty and an abomination, after which he used a sawed-off .32 Colt revolver to send a bullet into the head of Rabbi Morris Adler, one of the nation's prominent religious leaders. He then placed the barrel of the gun over his own right ear and shot himself through the head.

When the shooting occurred, I was at work on a novel in my home only three miles from Shaarey Zedek. But before I read about them in the Sunday newspapers, I knew nothing of Rabbi Adler or Richard Wishnetsky. I am not Jewish and had not encountered the rabbi or known of his extensive reputation in the community. As for Richard, our paths had nearly crossed in Ann Arbor where we had gone to school and had a couple of mutual friends. He was two years younger than I.

On the following Wednesday Richard died. A day earlier both Detroit dailies had published articles containing writing that he had been doing in the last few weeks of his life, including an apologia for his fantasized murder of the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. Rabbi Adler died three weeks later, and thousands mourned him in a funeral described as the largest in the city's history.

The idea of doing a book on what seemed a bizarre yet significant story first occurred to me soon after I had written The Murder of Rabbi Adler, an article published by Commentary in June, 1966. Sources in the Jewish community offered encouragement for a more extensive study of the subject, and when response to the article included queries from a number of publishers, I decided to leave my novel and my teaching position and attempt a book on the assassination-suicide.

From the beginning of my inquiry it seemed that one who seriously considered the matter would be led into a labyrinth of questions, facts, opinions, answers, and inevitably more questions. As I finally conceived of it, the framework within which I hoped to formulate and explore the right questions consisted of a biography of Richard as complete and accurate as possible, dictated by those who knew him and by what he wrote about himself and his world; a portrait of Rabbi Adler in the same fashion but with less detail; and a description of the milieu within which their lives converged and tragically ended.

The basic problem in a description of milieu was one of definition or demarcation of limits. Both Rabbi Adler and Richard were part of Congregation Shaarey Zedek and the world Jewish community, simultaneously residents of Detroit in the second third of the twentieth century, and knowledgeable inheritors of the accumulated traditions of Western civilization. They were at times more intimately aware of the ancient communities of Babylonia or Greece than they were of the streets of suburban or northwest Detroit. Thus, while the line I drew encircled the immediate community and its contemporary history, reference to points in time and space beyond this line was frequent.

As might be expected I had little difficulty finding a large number of people who would talk readily about their experience with Rabbi Adler. I began with Mrs. Adler, who was immediately gracious, courageous, and most helpful and remained so throughout my work on the project. Fortunately, the rabbi was a man with love and reverence for the spoken and written word. Of great assistance were his book on the Talmud and especially his posthumous collection of essays and occasional pieces entitled May I Have a Word with You? He has been called America's most quotable rabbi, and I have often quoted from his works in an effort to present the man, his ideas, attitudes, and values and to relate these to Richard.

The reconstruction of Richard's relatively short life was another matter. By his final act he had made himself (quite consciously and purposely, it seemed) a public person, legally and morally subject to investigation. Yet at the same time, a thorough study would inevitably involve the privacy of many whose lives had been traumatically shattered by his final outburst of violence. Some would be either unwilling or unable to sort out their feelings, thoughts, and memories of Richard for a stranger, or indeed for anyone. Some might feel, with or without reason, they had something to hide, others that their roles were bound by various professional oaths not to divulge information. Consideration had to be given to those who still had to live their lives and who might suffer psychological difficulty as a result of the study's publication.

Nonetheless, the lists of interviewees I compiled for several different points of focus in Richard's life continued to grow, and the frequently contradictory reports I received confirmed my notion that I must talk to as many as possible. Richard made a large number of contacts and presented many different faces, and so the number of interviews I conducted rose to over two hundred. With few exceptions, those I approached were most cooperative once they understood what I was doing and why, and they combined to produce a considerable amount of useful information and a number of significant documents belonging or relating to Richard. In several cases I supplied pseudonyms for those involved; in a few instances I changed certain background facts to further insure anonymity. To all these people I am deeply grateful, not only for their information and insights but also, in so many cases, for their encouragement and inspiration. Generally, the only important sources with whom I was not successful were Richard's family and the psychiatrists who treated him professionally.

On three separate occasions I approached the Wishnetskys, initially through the kind offices of Mrs. Adler, who along with her husband had known the family for years. Each time I received a negative response. The response of the doctors was generally that though wanting to help, they felt it improper to comment on the matter because of the obligation of confidentiality. Clearly then, a thorough psychoanalytic approach was out of the question.

A survey of recent psychiatric literature, however, reinforced my notion that a close look at Richard's experience in late childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood should not be considered of negligible value simply because a deep and intimate knowledge of his early years was missing. Even if Richard's early childhood could not be documented in its vital detail, the study might fruitfully concentrate primarily on his later emotional and intellectual development and the impact of his social and cultural experience.

One of the few things that seemed clear when I first considered what Richard Wishnetsky said and did on February 12, 1966, was that he was a young man in pain; a deep, complex pain seemed etched in every word and every movement. About the time Richard graduated from high school in 1960, his future victim, Rabbi Adler, wrote a short, insightful essay on pain. In it he speaks of pain as a many-faceted and multidimensional phenomenon, never localized, always involving the total being of the sufferer, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. To deal with the problem of pain, he wrote, with any degree of adequacy, one would have to bring together several disciplines that have man as the object of their specialized study. Physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, sociologist, religious counselor—all have a particular interest in this field, and each has a specific contribution to make toward our understanding of the problem of pain.

From the beginning of my work it seemed that only the kind of multilateral approach Rabbi Adler described could adequately analyze the events leading to his death and Richard's suicide. From the start, what I found most significant about the assassination-suicide was that it seemed the culmination of an extended series of apparent failures involving nearly all the basic institutions of modem society: the law, education, medicine, religion, fellowship, and the family. Underlying each of these apparent failures, of course, was the essential failure of a young man (seemingly marked for a valuable and enduring kind of success) to make the most basic decision for life and against death. The undeniable fact remained that neither the legal framework of society nor education of reputed quality nor psychiatry (three hospitals and a number of doctors) nor personal contact with prominent religious minds (Rabbi Adler and others) nor the apparent offer of significant human relationship (from a number of intelligent and concerned people) was able to prevent Richard from plunging with determination into the abyss.

An attempt to fix guilt, to define the essence of failure, to assign cause or causes in a case like this would have been naive and absurd. Perhaps, however, one could legitimately attempt to describe the configuration of failure, collect the external evidence of internal conflict, and relate that conflict to the society that could do so little for or about it. Such an effort had even more importance, I felt, in the face of Richard's calculated attempt to announce to the world through his final act that he saw himself as a significant representative of a society that he declared totally bankrupt.

T. V. LoCicero

Oak Park, Michigan

PART I

Just born and already he enjoys the longest genealogical record in the Western world. Was he not admitted to the Covenant of Abraham? So-called blue bloods and their Social Register are upstarts and parvenus alongside this little fellow. And the list of his ancestors is studded with the prominent names of creative spirits who enriched the life of all mankind. He seems a little frail to bear so great a patrimony.

Yet what possibilities he represents. He is without fanatic loyalty or assimilationist tendencies. He has a capacity for such attachment to Jewish traditions as to enhance his life and to acquire a sense of deep companionship with Jews everywhere. He can be a good American imbued with profound democratic sensitivities and a fine awareness of the interdependence of all men. He is qualified to form in beautiful synthesis the two currents of influence in his life, the Judaic and the American. The past and present can unite to prepare him to work for a desirable and realizable future.

Rabbi Morris Adler

Chapter 1

Richard Steven Wishnetsky was born in the Bronx on July 1, 1942, in a land whose soil was never touched by the violence then wracking much of the globe. He was only three years old when the killing stopped, and he knew none of its thirty million victims. Yet as a Jew he would find special significance in the fate of a certain six million of these people. And as an American he would grow up with the specter wrought by a single capsule of pent-up energy dropped on each of two Japanese cities in August 1945.

Although the effects of war may not always be immediately visible, the first consequence of World War II for Richard was quite obvious: he was without a father for the first two or three years of his life. As he grew out of infancy with his mother in the Bronx, his father fought thousands of miles away with the 101st Airborne Division. Then with Richard established in the miniature universe of the two- or three-year-old, his father's return suddenly produced a new, large, and pervasive presence to deal with on intimate terms.

Richard very rarely spoke about his early years to his friends; when he did so, he generally restricted himself to the remark that he was not a very happy child. Upon his return from the war Mr. Wishnetsky worked for his father in the wine business (Richard later mentioned to friends that his dad was a real connoisseur of fine wines), and the family continued their residence in the Bronx. Richard's immediate family grew larger about the time he enrolled in the public-school system of the Bronx, when his mother brought home a new little sister named Terry. Three years later when Richard was eight, another daughter entered the family and was named Ellen. According to one of his first girl friends in high school, Richard did indicate that at one point during his first eleven years in New York, he had experienced some psychological disturbance apparently serious enough to bring him into contact with a psychiatrist.

One afternoon in the middle of November 1952, Richard, then aged ten, was brought to the Workmen's Circle School No. 16 off Allerton Avenue in the Bronx at some distance from his family's residence. For 90 minutes three or four times a week for the remainder of the school year, he attended sessions at the Yiddish secular school after a full day of regular public-school classes. The class at Workmen's Circle was taught by Emanuel Mark, a young man who would turn up again by chance in Richard's life a few years later and hundreds of miles distant. Mr. Mark remembers that Richard was well behind the other children upon arriving but almost immediately caught up:

He stood out clearly very soon and was obviously very bright, always making comments and asking questions, always very interested. It was a secular rather than a religious school, and in order to give them some sense of their Jewish heritage, the children were taught Yiddish and a little Hebrew along with some Jewish history, music, literature, customs, and celebrations. We had some dramatics—we put on some plays in Yiddish—and some singing of Jewish songs.

Thus Richard gained some cultural notion of who his parents and grandparents were and where they had come from. In the process he was embarking on what would be a lifelong involvement with the puzzling question What is a Jew?

As Rabbi Morris Adler pointed out in an article he wrote for Harper's two years before he died, a satisfying answer is difficult to come by. A Jew, he said, has not gained his identity, his Jewishness, by assenting to a religious creed or a rigid formula, by virtue of his belonging to a race or a civilization or a subculture. All these ways of definition, he said, finally disappoint the Jew. So he feels frustrated. He still asks: ‘What am I?’ And perhaps in the process he has provided the best answer possible at present: A Jew is a person who is always asking ‘What am I?’ Certainly this definition is as authentic and comprehensive as any other.

Asking insistently What is a Jew? or as Rabbi Adler suggests, What am I? has led some to a strong sense of identity and deep insight. For others, including Richard Wishnetsky, the attempt to provide answers to these questions has at times exacted a painful toll. In the paradox and ambiguity of Jewish history, one finds a remarkable story of endurance and achievement, which cannot be told, however, without frequent and appalling reference to centuries of massacre, expulsion, isolation, and repression. A history of such accomplishment and victimization may impose an especially stern task on the young Jew who examines the past in an effort to understand himself.

In the past one hundred years the world Jewish community has experienced three of the most significant events in all its history: the uprooting and emigration of millions of Jews from Europe, beginning in the latter part of the last century; the murder of the six million; and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Each of these three events has had sometimes indirect, often profound effects on most Jews, and Morris Adler and Richard Wishnetsky do not seem exceptions.

Morris Adler and his family, as well as both of Richard's grandfathers, arrived in America after the turn of the century during the most active phase of immigration in which more than two million Jews came to the United States, primarily from Russia and Poland. They came from the formerly compact and homogeneous society of the shtetl, which had already begun to disintegrate when mass emigration began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Previously life in the ghetto or small town had been a closely knit fabric of Yiddish culture, and these were people who lived with a powerful daily sense of Jewish identity and the unity of Israel. Yet long-standing conflicts intensified and deepened rifts within the society, pitting one religious sect or political group against another, rich against poor, class against class.

With emigration spurred by vicious pogroms in Russia, these conflicts generally resolved into the twin streams of religious Orthodoxy and secularism. Secularism under whatever banner-nationalism, Zionism, socialism, or the labor movement-was heavily represented among the Jews who found their way to America. The Orthodox Jew struggled to live his religion as he had in the old country, while the secularist went about the business of institutionalizing his particular ideology. Both groups however, settled primarily in the large urban centers. Both retained a strong sense of their own Jewishness and were thrown together in the new hostile urban ghettos where jobs were terribly scarce and living conditions often miserable. Yet only a decade or so into the new century it had become increasingly possible for the East European immigrant to move rather quickly into the American middle class. Both the Orthodox religious and secular Jew could share the feeling that America finally seemed to be paying off some of its promises.

In 1912 Rabbi Joseph Adler arrived in New York from the town of Slutsk in Russia to join relatives who had preceded him and had been urging him to sample the freedom and opportunities for a full life. One day a few years later, as Morris Adler would recall, the rabbi called his sons to him and said:

"Children, I first heard of America when I was about your age. I was living in a small, remote village far across the sea. America was a word I heard, its meaning or even location I did not know. One day a visitor came and I listened with fascination to the stories he told of the New World I found a little book that told of the life of Abraham Lincoln. I listened eagerly as my parents read letters from fortunate relatives who had made their way to the land of freedom. I dreamed of America where all are free, where there are no Siberias, no pogroms, no persecution.

This morning, dear children, I was sworn in as a citizen. I feel as if I have finally come home. I no longer feel like an outsider, an eternal alien, a stranger. I am part of the great fraternity of freedom of which I have dreamed these many years.

The labor-radicals among the immigrant population soon established their own secular Yiddish schools (like Workmen's Circle), their own press and theater, and their own welfare agencies. The aim and purpose of these institutions was nothing more and nothing less than the perpetuation of their community of Yiddish culture. The relationship between Richard's grandfather, William Hordes, and Jewish secularism in general (Zionism in particular) was perhaps not atypical.

Born in 1893 in the small town of Cholni near Bobruisk in White Russia, he was raised and educated by his Orthodox family who were members of the Habad, a philosophical and rationalizing branch of the Hasidic movement. In the face of this strict religious upbringing, Hordes in his youth turned to the Zionist Labor movement, embraced secular perhaps even antireligious ways and brought his hopes and attachments with him to the United States in 1910. Working on various jobs and in factories while he learned English, Mr. Hordes finally settled in Detroit, entered the insurance business, established an agency, married, and raised a family of two sons and a daughter. Assuming a prominent position in the Farband Labor Zionist Order, he helped to establish Zionist-oriented Jewish folk schools in Detroit along with Michigan's first Jewish summer camp; relief fund-raising projects for Israel claimed his active interest as did the American political scene. The considerable success of his agency enabled him to pursue the tradition-honored activity of a generous philanthropy; because of his frequent contributions to the Jewish National Fund, he was known to many Detroit Jews as Mr. J.N.F. At his death in 1964 he was eulogized as a one-man social service movement. Late in his life Mr. Hordes returned to the religion of his early youth and rejoined the Habad movement. He also became one of the most important people in the life of his grandson, Richard. Moses Wishnetsky, Richard's paternal grandfather, was born in Russia in 1889. Coming to the United States about the same time Mr. Hordes did, he took up residence in the Bronx, became a merchant, married, and also raised two sons and a daughter. Eventually he acquired a Manischewitz wine franchise and was also involved in the company's export business. As ft did to William Hordes, American success came generously to Mr. Wishnetsky. He is described as a leader in organized Jewish life and in Jewish culture, a self-made man of very strong personality and ego, a real live-wire, a tremendous conversationalist, whose conversations, however, are apt to be considerably one-sided even as he holds forth on a wide range of topics with verve and intelligence. All the Wishnetsky men are like that—it seemed to be passed on directly from grandfather to father to son, said one who was acquainted with all three. Now nearing eighty, Moses Wishnetsky, still vigorous and sharp-witted, lives with his wife, a quiet and reserved little woman, in their Westchester, New York, home.

Briefly, then, the first generation of Richard's family in the New World was secular, self-made, and successful in the American fashion; vigorously active in the community, adapting to the American scheme of things without excluding an ongoing sense of Jewish identity. If Richard's grandparents suffered anguish, anxiety, and alienation in the uprooting process, in retrospect these common factors seem to have been dealt with effectively and are not particularly visible.

In a book that became a favorite of Richard's, Will Herberg wrote about the development of the three great religions in America—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. About the Jews he says at one point:

Because religion and immigrant culture were so thoroughly fused as to seem almost indistinguishable, the East European immigrants came up against a shattering crisis as they confronted the second generation, their American sons and daughters. The second generation, desperately anxious to become unequivocally American, was resentful of the immigrant culture which the older generation seemed so eager to transmit to it.

Thus, says Herberg, this second generation became the weakest link in the chain of Jewish continuity. In the case of Richard's family, however, this crisis seems to have been mitigated. Because his grandparents arrived in a more hospitable America after the turn of the century, because of their strong secular bent, and because of their effective adaptation, they gave their children little to rebel against or reject in the terms employed by Professor Herberg. Richard's father attended Yiddish schools in New York, and subsequently there seems to have been no serious disaffection, rejection, or breaking away. Mr. Wishnetsky remained in the Bronx to help his father run the Manischewitz franchise and later, when he moved his family to Detroit, took a position in his father-in-law's insurance agency. The Yiddish culture of their parents perhaps seemed less relevant to Edward and Evelyn Wishnetsky, Richard's parents, than the American institutions they became active in, such as Democratic politics. But while they are certainly Americans first of all, they have not renounced their roots or a self-identification as members of the Jewish community.

At the time Richard was taking his afternoon classes at Workmen's Circle, the Wishnetskys were living in a solidly middle-class neighborhood in the upper Bronx. It was a predominantly Jewish area lined with apartment complexes, one of which served Richard and his family. In the summer in which he became eleven ( 1953) and after he had finished the fifth grade in the Bronx, the Wishnetskys moved to Detroit to occupy a new home on Manor Road on the city's heavily Jewish northwest side.

During the years in which Richard started his formal education and became slowly more aware of the larger realities around him, the world was learning for the first time what a global cold war was, and television perfected itself as an agent of societal metamorphosis in time to present a daily diet of the horses, guns, and fisticuffs of Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson to a generation of entranced kids. In 1948 a nation called Israel had been born in violence; subsequently numbers of American Jews, including Richard's uncle, Herb Hordes, again cast their lot with emigration and traveled to share the uncertain fate of the new homeland.

Chapter 2

The new neighborhood in Detroit was thoroughly middle-class, its quiet well-paved streets lined with a variety of private homes, most of them built within the previous twenty-five years. At one end of the block that included the new Wishnetsky home was a Lutheran church, and at the other end was a Catholic elementary school, its ample fenced-in playground only a few quick steps from Richard's door. A sign, however, on the large gate said, Private Playground for Presentation Children Only. It was a rather well apportioned block—approximately one-third Jewish, one-third Catholic, and one-third Protestant. At the time, there were only a few widely scattered Negro families living in the area.

Manor Road, about a half mile from the city's northern limits at Eight Mile Road, was near the heart of Detroit's Jewish community; the area was then one-quarter to one-half Jewish. Within walking distance were synagogues, the Jewish Community Center, and the Jewish shops, stores, day schools, and delicatessens that line Seven Mile Road in the vicinity of the Royal Theater. With large elms joining from both sides to form a lush green canopy in the summer Manor was a cool, shady, and pleasant street. The sun seeped through the trees to sparkle lightly on well-tended green lawns in front of the white-frame and red-brick colonials that predominated on the Wishnetskys' block.

Richard's new home, two-story and square-faced in orange brick with tan trim and large shutterless windows, stood out as the only one of its design on the block; neat landscaping helped to give it a cheerful, open, and salutary appearance. Traffic on the street was light because Manor ended a few doors down from the Wishnetskys, at the Presentation playground The public schools in the area had the reputation of being among the best in the city. Mr. Wishnetsky was only minutes away from the office where he took his new position in his father-in-law's insurance agency. His wife was back in her hometown among old and easily made new friends and only a short distance from her parents. The neighborhood was generally safe, quiet, and attractive. For the task of raising children while leading a comfortable, secure, and stable life, middleclass America seemed to offer little that was better.

Less than 4 percent of the three million people who were living in the metropolitan area at mid-century were Jewish, but researchers found that the number of Jews holding professional or white-collar jobs or who were self-employed was un-proportionately high, that the Jewish median income was considerably higher than the non-Jewish, and that the educational level of the Jewish group was much higher than that of other groups.

Soon after Labor Day in that first September in Detroit, Richard began the sixth grade at Edward Alexander MacDowell School, three short blocks from his home. MacDowell was a large two-story orange-brick building which served over twelve hundred children in the primary grades, with thirty-five to thirty-eight youngsters in each of its neon-lit classrooms. That first day Richard sat in a homeroom class composed almost entirely of Jewish children; there were only one or two non-Jews evident as Miss Carvener called the roll. As she neared the end, she called, Richard… then paused for a second, whereupon Richard announced loudly, "It's Wish and net and sky."

Phyllis Carvener, an experienced teacher with a good reputation among former students, recalls Richard quite vividly: He was a very bubbly, friendly, outgoing little boy. Extremely eager in the classroom, really dying to answer questions, with legs and arms all going in different directions in the attempt to get my attention so he would be allowed to answer. I used to kid him about not being able to talk without his flamboyant arm gesturing.

Richard had Miss Carvener in homeroom for math, English, Spanish, and spelling, for about half of each school day. To her he seemed happy, affectionate, and bright, but he was only one in a group of very precocious children: I thought there were others in the class who were brighter than he. But he was so eager! He would rush to get an answer out of his mouth and fall all over his tongue, which was quite comical at times. Then he would have to slow down to get the answer out.

Richard's classmates were grinding their own lenses for telescopes, reading widely on their own, and doing a considerable amount of outside work; a number of them were over the twelfth-grade reading level and could not be charted properly. To some extent many were allowed to work on their own and at their own pace in the classroom. Students who skipped a half or a full grade were not uncommon at MacDowell. Miss Carvener recalls: I didn't think of Richard as a particularly creative child, at least not in my terms…I had a number of kids writing stories and doing creative writing of sorts, but Richard didn't contribute this kind of thing. He seemed to learn effortlessly. He did seem to find it difficult to accept mistakes, but I never had any trouble with him, and he appeared to be comfortable with the other kids in the group.

One recurring episode in the classroom involved Richard's sister, Terry, then in the second grade at MacDowell. Says Miss Carvener: She was a very cute, chubby-cheeked little girl and she used to come into our room every so often with a message for her big brother. The class would stop when Terry came in to announce that she had something to tell Richard, and everyone would wait and listen as she went down the aisle to her brother's desk to say something like, ‘Richard, Mamma wants you to stop at the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread.’ Richard would suffer through all of this patiently, knowing that everyone was watching and smiling or laughing a bit.’

Richard's parents took an active interest in his progress in school and along with Mr. and Mrs. Hordes, Richard's grandparents, came to an open house that first year at MacDowell. They were told their son's work was always well done and on time, that he was good-natured and had a very special enthusiasm. Says Miss Carvener: I expected the very best things for Richard. I found really no hint at all of future trouble. There were a number of kids at the time who were disturbed, some of them seeing psychiatrists, and once in a while someone would break into tears in the classroom. I remember vaguely tears of frustration coming to Richard on a couple of occasions, but it was certainly nothing out of the ordinary.

Miss Carvener liked Richard very much. Testimony from his friends indicates that he was very fond of Miss Carvener, which perhaps helps to explain why he took great pleasure in teaching his teacher. Richard corrected me in class on one or two occasions and got a terrific boot out of it, recalls Miss Carvener. I tried to answer with humor, saying something like, Well, that's the first mistake I ever made in my life: But I remember distinctly the excited timbre of his voice as he corrected me.

Julie Lieberman (pseud.) is a pretty, brown-haired and brown-eyed wife and mother now, and must have been a petite and attractive girl of eleven or so when she met Richard for the first time in the sixth grade. Their acquaintance began in class and on their walks home from school and became a lifelong friendship. Julie still has a photograph of Richard and her, taken during his first year in Detroit at a class picnic or summer outing. In the picture Richard is a skinny little boy in white short-sleeved shirt and short pants, his thin right arm nestled firmly—and, it seems, rather proudly-around Julie, who appears to be enduring the momentary possession quite stoically.

Julie remembers that Richard didn't always get along with his other teachers as well as he did with Miss Carvener. In particular there was a sixth-grade science teacher who had considerable difficulty with him; Richard was always wisecracking and chatting in his classroom. Once Richard presented a class report which apparently went rather thoroughly into some technical detail on the subject of atom smashing. When Richard had finished, however, the teacher remarked, What kind of report is that? No one can understand it. To which Richard replied haughtily, gesturing to his classmates, Well, these people can understand it. You're just too stupid to understand it. The man promptly marched him down to the principal's office and demanded that Richard be removed from his classroom. The Wishnetskys were called and informed of their son's behavior before he was allowed to return to the class.

According to Julie, Richard's good sense of humor and ready laugh made him well liked among his classmates, though he had few close friends outside of school. Often finishing an assignment ahead of time in class, he was easily bored and would constantly talk with those around him, sometimes getting himself into trouble. Though serious, he was very outgoing, not at all shy or introverted, always in love with conversation.

He and Julie would talk on the way home from school or during the summer, and were soon great pals. They often talked about school and their families; Richard described his grandfathers and said he liked both of them very much. Julie and his other classmates were sure he was going to become a scientist. She remembers walking home one day while Richard explained, for her educational benefit, what he said was Einstein's theory of relativity.

As are most youngsters at the strange and inconclusive age of twelve, Richard was in a great hurry to grow up. In the summer following his first year at MacDowell he was given a birthday party prepared by his mother in their home. A number of classmates and friends were invited, both boys and girls, including Julie. Perhaps it was a bit too formal. she recalls, arranged with candles on the table for a kind of grown-up dinner party. Richard was apparently under the impression that his mother and all other adults would disappear once the party got under way, but this didn't happen. He got very upset because his mother would not leave them alone, finally broke into tears, and left in some humiliation for his bedroom. He remained there crying until someone managed to persuade him to come back down and join the party.

But Julie also remembers lighter moments. One Saturday afternoon in the seventh grade, the two of them went to the movies, a matinee at the Royal Theater. Richard always loved the movies and in later years became an addicted cinephile who might experience a particular film as a highly significant event. No larger importance seems attached to this one, however-a typical matinee billing dramatizing the quaint Hollywood horror of various unfortunate people who grew into giant pea pods, or vice versa. Julie became thoroughly terrified and decided to sit on the floor under her seat. Richard, however, enjoyed himself immensely, laughing and teasing her throughout. Years later they would often refer to this episode and share giggles.

When Richard and his classmates moved on to the seventh grade at MacDowell, they were instructed in English and history by Mrs. Jeanne Harris, a calm and experienced teacher with adolescent children of her own. What Phyllis Carvener had to say about Richard and his mates is echoed by Mrs. Harris with some elaboration:

"Richard was not by any means the brightest boy in the class. Many of these Jewish children were brilliant, but also very nervous, uneasy, and at times very emotional. Richard was all these things and not at all unique…quite typical, in fact.

"At times these youngsters were difficult to work with, but generally Richard was a delightful boy and very pleasant to have in the classroom. Some of the boys, including Richard, could be disruptive, drumming on desks, doing a lot of fidgeting, a lot of visiting and talking with their neighbors. Sometimes parents were called in to help settle a child down.

Mrs. Wishnetsky was very proud of Richard and very interested in his progress. Most of these children were intensely competitive and generally pushed by parents who were most concerned that their children achieve a very high level of success in their schoolwork.

The children often set their own standard in the classroom, and many of them forced their teacher to move ahead more quickly with the material at hand, to attempt projects that she would not ordinarily consider. MacDowell was generally a good school, according to Mrs. Harris, primarily because of the caliber of its students and because of the interest exhibited by their parents.

For Mrs. Harris, Richard was extremely industrious and always prepared. He handled himself well in the classroom and was very vocal. As in Miss Carvener's class, some of the brighter pupils were allowed to proceed on their own at times in small groups, and Richard could run a group effectively. Good-natured and fun-loving, according to Mrs. Harris he related well to his classmates but didn't seem very interested in girls. The teacher concluded:

Richard was certainly not as creative as some of the others. But he was very well read for his age and brought a lot of background information to the discussions we had in class. He seemed very interested in government and politics, which is a bit unusual at this stage. He was very good verbally, could stand on his feet and express himself and did so often, but I can't remember anything he wrote.

Walking home one afternoon from school, Richard, as he was very apt to do, struck up a conversation with a fellow student. The boy was a grade ahead at MacDowell and, like Julie, would become a long-term friend. The boys discovered they lived a few blocks from one another and had mutual friends; they were soon into a discussion that continued off and on for the next dozen or so years. We were sort of budding intellectuals even then, says Fred Baskin. We would talk a lot, I’d go over to play ping-pong at his house, and the friendship struck up.

Fred Baskin is a second-generation Jew of less than medium height and slight build, with wavy brown hair over a high forehead and a goatee which gives him a pleasant, slightly devilish air. He has learned well, as have most in the group of young intellectuals of which Richard became more or less a part, the subtler techniques of youthful debate-the sweeping, dazzling display of jargon, the frequent and casual reference to the makers of intellectual history, the furrowed frown of mild contempt or the odd blank stare of incomprehension as an opponent struggles for the right word. This is Fred speaking about his friend:

"'In grade school Richard was an easily piqued person (quite normally and properly so I thought at the time), very enthusiastic, crude, extroverted, intellectual, sensitive, and unhappy, particularly with his family (especially his father), religion, and a number of other things. I wouldn't say he was extraordinarily unhappy, but there were a number of things he didn't like and was very open to say he didn't like.

Once he got to know me better he had no qualms about talking about personal things like his family. The important thing is that he had no reluctance whatsoever to say reasonably cynical things about his likes, dislikes, and beliefs. We were all forming our opinions at that time, and I’d say he was much more idealistic even than I and very unhappy with what evidence of non-idealism he found. He was no martyr or saint himself, and would fully admit faults and inadequacies in himself.

If Richard did in fact feel disaffection toward his family it would seem to have been linked on the surface to what Fred calls evidence of non-idealism. and as such not uncommon. If one has grown up denouncing the values of one's parents, one has indeed traveled a well-beaten path. Yet youthful idealism has rarely seemed  so thoroughly self-conscious, so often analyzed, romanticized, and in a certain sense prescribed. Frequently the very terms of genuine approval applied to Richard's parents by their many friends and acquaintances became terms of derision in the mouths of Richard and some of his friends.

Having married relatively young and because of wartime disruption, the Wishnetskys were not college-educated; included in their wide circle of friends, however, are a number of professional people, doctors, lawyers, judges, and city officials. Their tastefully decorated home on Manor had walls hung with original oils and shelves lined with the best books of the day. Community organizations often claim the Wishnetskys as active members, and the family has continued the philanthropic activity of Richard's grandparents.

Evelyn Wishnetsky is described by friends as a petite and attractive woman, gracious, tactful, and culturally aware, with a pleasant ability to make people comfortable by doing and saying what is socially called-for. She is well liked and popular, always well-dressed in a tasteful and understated fashion, active in social, cultural, and religious work in the community, and described as very devoted to her children. Richard, said one of his longtime friends, was the apple of his mother's eye.

Mr. Wishnetsky, known to his friends as Eddie, is a man of imposing physique. With a reputation for being an impeccable dresser, his clothes are perfectly cut by a personal tailor, his appearance invariably immaculate. Said one acquaintance, 'You sense that he judges others by the same standards of appearance he sets for himself. He is also described as a proud man not given to displays of feeling or emotion, who loves to relax in the semiprivate solitude of the golf course. At times direct and blunt in his speech, he is also known as a genial host and convivial wit, a great punster who loves to play with words. Thought of as stubborn, intelligent, practical, and successful in business, Mr. Wishnetsky is pictured by some friends as a strong personality with perhaps a touch of the cynic. He was always very proud of Richard during his son's exceptional progress through school and was very apt to describe for a friend Richard's latest achievement. At the same time a firm disciplinarian of the old school, he apparently found it rather difficult to express or demonstrate this pride to his son.

The antagonism that developed between them was evident to many of Richard's closer friends. It likely had long-standing and unconscious roots, though its surface appearance was that of the almost classic confrontation of the hard-boiled, practical father and the sensitive, idealistic son. One of Richard's young intellectual pals who was often in the Wishnetsky home on Manor and who naturally sided with Richard recalls:

"Richard's father was the paradigm of the relatively intelligent and successful businessman. There was a good life which involved being only so conventional that your society would respect you and allow you to make money. And rm sure he would have liked his son to be successful in some broad sense so he could be proud of him. Yet he wouldn't have been particularly proud for his son to become a Nobel Prize-winning author. The mother had a little of that mystique, hoping that her son would rise above the merchant class, but the father definitely didn't He wouldn't even indicate hope that his son would be successful in business. I don't know, I never quite plumbed the full antagonism between them.

The mother generally stood as a buffer between father and son. Richard always considered her a fence-sitter and thought she wouldn't stick up for him. And, of course, he was always unhappy about just how middle-class she was and about the very role she played. She believed very strongly that you never ask a question which would make anybody feel bad or antagonize them, and this bothered him.

There are contradictions, exaggerations, and unwarranted assumptions here, but these are to be expected. Complete accuracy isn't to be supposed from one who likely received only Richard's complaints and probably had less access to happier moments in the home. Yet if the details sound rather petty and commonplace, the situation was nonetheless real and troubling for Richard and his parents.

According to Fred Baskin, Richard had not yet decided what he wanted to be: One of his principle interests then was science (astronomy, physics), but then for any of us kids who were intelligent, science was always connected with intelligence, never the humanities or social sciences at all; we were given this prejudice that intelligence was almost equated with being a scientist. We were also, however, beginning to read the newspaper for the first time. That was about the only non-science intellectual thing anyone was interested in besides religion; even at that time I can remember us discussing the major events of the times.

Richard told Fred that he did not enjoy going to synagogue and resented going to Hebrew school for his Bar Mitzvah training. He was very impressed, says Fred, .. with the fact that I wasn't going to Hebrew school and was not going to have a Bar Mitzvah. It shook him up a little. His reasons were probably typical-he would have rather gone home after school at MacDowell and played catch or whatever. I became a profound atheist in about the seventh grade, and for Richard this was something new. When we would argue about religion, he for the first time found himself acting as the God-advocate and, I’m sure, found himself very unused to the role. Since he was not doing very well, he