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November 2000 Issue

NYPD Jew: Adventures of an Undercover Rabbi

By Rabbi Niles Elliot Goldstein

"A bullet through the neck," Mike says as he shakes his head and stops for a red light. "Could've been me instead of him." Just an hour earlier, Mike and I were in Manhattan at a rainy memorial service for a fellow Drug Enforcement Administration agent who'd been killed during an undercover operation on Staten Island.

Suddenly, the car up ahead of us skids over the median strip and slams into a stoplight pole. It had been moving far too fast for the slick conditions. We pull over to the side of the road and get out of our car. Rain drizzles down our trenchcoats as we head toward the driver. I notice that Mike's right elbow is slightly cocked, his hand close to the automatic that I know is tucked under his shirt.

Mike shows the driver his badge and asks the dazed man to step out of the car. The man gets out, slowly, and gazes at us. Blood oozes from his forehead. His sweatshirt is torn at the shoulder. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but nothing comes out.

Our government-issued Chevy Caprice doesn't have a citizens band radio in it and we need to call for an ambulance. As Mike begins to ask the man some questions, I sprint over to a house across the street and knock on the front door. A housekeeper appears at the window, looking weary of her work and wary of me. I press my badge against the glass, feeling awkward, like I'm making use of an authority that I've done nothing to deserve. "Rabbi Niles Goldstein," I say. "I'm a police chaplain. There's a problem at the intersection and I need to use your phone."

Mike and I explain the details to the local cop who arrives within minutes. He seems confused, even skeptical. Nobody trusts anybody. I tell him that I'm the assistant rabbi down the street at the temple and I mention the name of one of his supervisors whom I know. He relaxes a bit and says he'll take over from here.

Mike and I get back in the Chevy and continue driving. We're in the heart of Westchester, New York City's affluent, northern suburban region. I've been working here for nearly two years as a pulpit rabbi, preaching, marrying and burying, trying to learn the ropes of the rabbinate week by week. But many of the congregants are quite satisfied with the status quo, and my religious idealism is wearing thin.

Mike turns into the driveway, a long and pine-lined lane that leads up a hill to the synagogue complex. The buildings are magnificent, but the setting is even more spectacular: trees in every direction, rabbits and squirrels darting in and out of shrubs. A far cry from the world of cops and criminals that Mike and other federal agents work in all the time.

Here I am, The Suburban Rabbi. My world is circumscribed by baby namings and benedictions. Yet when I'm interacting with people who put their lives at risk each and every day, my job feels different. In police work I've found an outlet for my energy, a community where, at least on the surface, everyone is interested in pushing their limits and making the world a better place.

We stop in front of the sanctuary. I thank Mike for the ride up from the city. He's heading back to his field office to work on a case against big-time heroin dealers in Newburgh. It's time for me to go to work, too. Our youth group is holding a dance tonight that I have to chaperone. I take off my trenchcoat and put on my yarmulke.

That was a couple of years ago. But my work as a police chaplain started earlier, in 1994 at a downtown bar. Three burly men walked through the front door, looked around, then approached me and said, "You the rabbi?" They were special agents from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the umbrella group for agents from the FBI, DEA, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Secret Service and all the other federal law-enforcement agencies in New York and around the country.

The association was looking for a new, national Jewish chaplain. My interview lasted a couple of hours. The oldest agent, an enormous U.S. marshal in his 50s, did most of the questioning: Know anything about cop culture? Ever seen a gunshot wound? My answers seemed to satisfy the agents, as did the fact that I'd gone through boot camp for the U.S. Army's chaplaincy program. After they found out that I had a black belt in karate, one of them started calling me "Rabbicop." I was offered the position, provided I passed a standard security clearance.

Entering the world of cops and criminals is not a common career move for a rabbi. But the fundamental mission of law enforcement--the pursuit of justice--seemed to mesh perfectly with one of the central tenets of Judaism. The prophet Isaiah declares, "Justice, justice shall you pursue!" I've seen that charge before the eyes of scores of agents and cops. Not that there aren't some bad ones. There are. But I have never met so many individuals into whose hands I would entrust my life.

Many of my duties are straightforward: being on call for emergencies, counseling agents, officiating at memorials and religious ceremonies. Sometimes an agent just wants to meet for a beer and shmooz. Because the position of law enforcement chaplain, especially for the various federal agencies, is relatively new, sometimes I feel like I'm making up my job as I go along. I've tried to push the boundaries of police chaplaincy. I didn't want to simply hear about the work of the agents I served--I wanted to live some of it.

One morning, two agents came to pick me up at my apartment in Park Slope. They didn't honk; they signaled me with a quick blast from their siren. "Call me Niles," I said as I entered the car. One of the agents, Rob, was a young Jewish guy. The other, John, was a slightly older Catholic who'd been a cop before he joined the DEA.

We drove to Washington Heights. I'd never seen so many beeper and electronics stores in my life. Many of them, I learned, were front businesses for drug dealers. As we turned down one street known for drug exchanges, we saw groups of young men congregating on the stoops of run-down brownstones. Their eyes followed us. There was hatred in them. Though I was with federal agents who had badges and guns, my blood ran cold.

The agents told me about their frustrations with the criminal justice system, about how little (if any) time behind bars the dealers wound up serving before they were back on the streets. Their work, the agents said, was endless and maddening, without any real appreciation from the outside or apparent benefit to the neighborhood.

"It can be pretty depressing to work in an environment like this," John said. "Sometimes it makes you angry."

"Or lose faith," added Rob. "So tell us rabbi, where is God in all this?"

I'd heard the question many times before in different contexts. This time it felt different. More raw. It was hard to see beauty and order, let alone experience spirituality, while working in a landscape that was so scarred by desperation and poverty. I wasn't sure how to answer him.

There is a rich and ancient tradition of people discovering God in the strangest of places. Moses may have first seen God in a burning bush, but Jonah finds his Creator in "the belly of the netherworld," and David encounters Him while walking "through the valley of the shadow of death." If God is everywhere and with us at all times--if God is truly God--then we should be able to find Him in the darkness as well as in the light. For those of us whose daily lives draw us into some of those darker regions, we just have to look a little harder.

Niles Elliot Goldstein is the founding rabbi of The New Shul in Greenwich Village, New York City. He is the author or editor of five books. His most recent work, God at the Edge: Searching for the Divine in Uncomfortable and Unexpected Places (Bell Tower), was published in August and can now be ordered through www.amazon.com.

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