Rabbi Alvin Kass ’57, GSAS’58, NYPD Chaplain for Nearly 60 Years

Rabbi Alvin Kass ’57, GSAS’58, the longest-serving chaplain in New York Police Department history and the first Jewish chief chaplain of the modern era, died on Oct. 29, 2025, in Manhattan. He was 89.

After nearly 60 years with the NYPD, Kass was not just its longest-serving chaplain but also its longest-serving employee of any kind, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in his New York Times obituary. A valued presence through eight mayoralties, Kass was also the NYPD’s first chaplain to be honored with a three-star ranking.

“He often said that policing exposed life in its rawest form — the moments of courage and the cruelty that most people never see,” Tisch said in the eulogy she delivered on Oct. 31 at Brooklyn’s East Midwood Jewish Center, where Kass was rabbi emeritus. “But he also believed that when that work is guided by compassion, it becomes something sacred. He spent his life helping officers hold on to that belief when the world tried to rip it from them.”

Kass was born and raised in Paterson, N.J. His father, Joseph, was a furniture salesman; his mother, Ida, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After arriving at the College in 1953, Kass shared a room in Hartley with Robert Alter ’57, an authority on Hebrew literature and a translator of the Bible, and Shalom Schwartz ’57, who became chairman of the Department of Psychology at Hebrew University. Kass earned his B.A. and M.A. in history.

He intended to become a lawyer; Kass was two weeks away from beginning his first year at Harvard Law on a scholarship when he opted to transfer to the Jewish Theological Seminary. “I decided to minister to people’s spiritual needs rather than legal ones,” he told CCT in 2006. He was ordained there as a Conservative rabbi in 1962.

After his ordination, Kass began his rabbinic career as a chaplain in the Air Force, where he served for two years. Following his military service, he went on to lead the congregation of the Astoria Center of Israel in Astoria, Queens, until 1978. He then led the congregation of the East Midwood Jewish Center in Brooklyn for 36 years. He was appointed to the NYPD in 1966, a week before his 31st birthday.

During his long career, Kass served under Howard Safir, the city’s first Jewish police commissioner since the early 19th century; he fought to persuade the Shomrim Society, the Jewish fraternal society he advised, to admit the anti-corruption whistle-blower David Durk; and he championed the reputation of Asser Levy, the 17th-century New Amsterdam colonist who, because he was Jewish, was initially barred from joining the militia. In 1996, Kass became the first Jewish chaplain of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Kass attended the funerals and ministered to the grieving families of all 23 police officers, two of them Jewish, who were killed at the World Trade Center on 9-11. He also conducted Rosh Hashanah services in a makeshift synagogue at LaGuardia Airport for emergency workers who had flown in from around the country to assist local police officers, firefighters and medical technicians.

“We can’t comprehend what He’s doing very often, but presumably He knows what He is doing, and we submit,” Kass wrote in the Jewish newspaper The Forward on the 20th anniversary of the attack. “We bow our head to what is often inscrutable and incomprehensible, and we accept it with a measure of faith and hope. That really is the essential message of Judaism, in the face of evil.”

Kass is survived by his daughter, Sarah ’87; sons, Lewis and Daniel’95; and three grandchildren. His wife of 54 years, Miryom Arnold GS’63, died in 2017.