Jerome Hansen

Susan Holmes, Detroit Free Press staff writers

Editor’s note: Fifty years ago today, February, 12, 1966, the Detroit metro area was rocked by the news that beloved Rabbi Morris Adler had been shot multiple times while conducting services in front of hundreds of worshipers at Temple Shaarey Zedek in Southfield.

Perhaps even more shocking, the shooter, Richard Wishnetsky, was well known to Adler. Wishnetsky, 23, was a member of the congregation and had received counseling from Adler after a mental breakdown.

Adler was a nationally known Jewish leader and one of the most revered rabbis in southeast Michigan. Shaarey Zedek Synagog, a $4.5-million structure, was one of the largest conservative synagogues in the country.

The events leading up to the bloody confrontation and eye-witness accounts of the incident appeared in the following day’s Detroit Free Press.

This article originally ran on Feb. 13, 1966.

Rabbi Morris Adler, 59, was shot and critically wounded Saturday during sabbath services in Shaarey Zedek Synagog, Southfield.

His assailant, a 23-year-old substitute teacher and former honor student who is a member of the congregation, then shot himself through the head.

Rabbi Adler, shot in the left side of the head and through the left arm, underwent emergency surgery in Sinai Hospital. He suffered serious brain damage.

The teacher, Richard S. Wishnetsky, of 1611 Lincolnshire, hovered near death in Providence Hospital. His brain was shattered.

Archive: Beloved rabbi was spiritual leader, legend

Dr. Harvey Gass, the chief of neurosurgery and leader of the team of Sinai doctors that spent two hours working on Adler, said the rabbi's arm wound was relatively minor, but that there was "severe damage from the head wound."

Dr. Gass said the bullet smashed into the skull behind the left ear, in the occipital region, and flattened itself against the heavy skill bone, shattering it and driving bone fragments into the brain.

He said there was massive bleeding in the left cerebellum and brain structures were severely damaged.

Dr. Gass would make no prediction about Rabbi Adler's condition. He was in Sinai Hospital's intensive care unit. His wife, Goldie, was at the hospital.

Wishnetsky, who had been seated among the congregation, which included his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Wishnetsky, stood up just as Rabbi Adler completed his sermon shortly before noon and started striding down the main isle.

Cantor Reuven Frankel, 35, who had started the prayers, looked up to see Wishnetsky a few feet from the platform where Rabbi Adler was seated with a 13-year-old boy who was being bar mitzvahed — being accepted as a full member of the congregation.

Archive: Eyewitness accounts of rabbi's shooting

Wishnetsky pulled a .32 caliber pistol and held it aloft, firing one shot into the high ceiling of the synagog.

He ordered the boy off the platform. Rabbi Adler and Cantor Frankel remained. Wishnetsky mounted the platform and turned to face the congregation.

Frankel stopped praying and the congregation sat in stunned silence as the young teacher started reading from a piece of paper, facing the crowded pews.

"This congregation is a travesty and an abomination. It has made a mockery by its phoniness and hypocrisy of the beauty and the spirit of Judaism," he said.

He continued reading. His voice broke and the congregation stirred restlessly.

Wishnetsky waved his pistol and shouted for silence, continuing his brief speech. It ended: "With this act, I protest the humanly horrifying and hence unacceptable situation."

There was a pause.

In a voice suddenly soft, he said: "Rabbi."

Then he fired a shot, the bullet striking Rabbi Adler in the left arm.

Adler rose from his chair. Wishnetsky fired again. The bullet pierced Adler's yarmulke — a skull cap — and slammed into the left side of his head, behind the ear. The rabbi fell to the platform.

Wishnetsky then placed the gun barrel against his own head over his right ear and fired. The bullet went through his brain and out the left side of his head.

Screaming women and children in the congregation rushed to the platform while men telephoned for police and ambulances.

Cantor Frankel said he had tried to slip away as Wishnetsky was making his speech, to try to telephone for help, but hadn't reached the phone before he heard the shots that felled Adler and Wishnetsky.

The boy on the platform with Rabbi Adler was Steven Frank, 13, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Frank, of 19767 Cheyenne.

Before Rabbi Adler delivered his sermon, Steven had made a brief speech, part of which was: "Today I am a man."

Steven said later than, after the first shot into the ceiling and Wishnetsky's order of "off the bimah" — the name for the platform — he reacted almost without thinking and left the platform to take a seat in the front row of pews.

Cantor Frankel said Wishnetsky, as he approached the platform, "appeared quite relaxed" and "seemed in control of himself."

"He was wearing a suit and tie and he looked just like any other worshipper," Frankel said.

"And then there was the shot and the gun, and he seemed to be waving it at everyone."

The entire drama was recorded on tape. Electronic equipment is used to form a permanent record of synagog services, especially bar mitzvahs.

Shooter was brilliant scholar

Wishnetsky's parents told police their son had been under psychiatric care, and had been a patient in more than one mental institution. They said he had been under a doctor's care for the last two or three years.

He graduated in June, 1964, from the University of Michigan, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the prestigious academic honors society.

He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Foundation graduate fellowship in 1964 and spent a year studying sociology at the University of Detroit.

A U-D spokesman said he understood the Wishnetsky was committed to a mental institution shortly after leaving the school.

Wishnetsky, according to friends, briefly attended Cornell University. He started taking classes last fall at Wayne State University and was working as a part-time school teacher in Detroit.

A few weeks ago, he started teaching full time, as a substitute teacher. His parents said they would not recall at which school he taught, but thought it was in the Woodward-Chicago Blvd. area.

Southfield Police Detective Jerry Simmons said friends of Wishnetsky told him the youth had "spoken of suicide before."

Rabbi Adler, according to some members of the congregation, had tried to counsel Wishnetsky after the young man had an emotional breakdown.

Providence Hospital doctors said there appeared to be "no hope" for Wishnetsky — that he suffered massive brain damage and was completely paralyzed. But they said he might be kept alive for several weeks under forced oxygen treatments.

Through an official at Sinai Hospital, Mrs. Adler sent word that she could not talk with reporters. It was typical of her that she asked the official to apologize to her.

Editor's note: Rabbi Morris Adler died in the early morning hours of March 11, 1966, 27 days after the shooting. Richard Wishnetsky died four days after the shooting.

Detroit Free Press newspaper on Feb. 13, 1966: