What’s Next For The Syrian Jews?

Tablet Magazine’s Allison Hoffman has been covering the arrest of Rabbi Saul Kassin, the de facto head of America’s Syrian Jewish community. He was apprehended yesterday in connection with a wide-ranging corruption investigation that implicated 43 other people, including four other rabbis and several New Jersey politicians. The FBI has credited Solomon Dwek, the scion of a prominent Syrian Jewish family based in Deal, N.J., with bringing law enforcement to its targets. Dwek apparently agreed to inform on the accused after being arrested in 2006 on suspicion of trying to defraud a bank of $50 million.

In 2007, Zev Chafets wrote about Brooklyn’s tight-knit Syrian Jewish community for The New York Times Magazine. The author of the recently released Cooperstown Confidential: Heroes, Rogues, and the Inside Story of the Baseball Hall of Fame spoke with Hoffman about this week’s events from his home in New York.

Listen here.

Related: Crisis of Faith