Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub proprietor who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, was born Jacob Rubinstein in 1911. (Central Press\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Whatever he was doing behind the scenes, Ruby became known as a nightclub owner and at some point began attending services at Congregation Shearith Israel. Rabbi Hillel Silverman, who was the Dallas synagogue\u2019s spiritual leader from 1954 to 1964, says Ruby came to say Kaddish for his father.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe came to minyan one day with a cast on his arm,\u201d Silverman recalled. \u201cI said, \u2018Jack, what happened?\u2019 He said, \u2018In my club, somebody was very raucous, and I was the bouncer.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Silverman, now 89 and still leading High Holy Days services every year, remembers Ruby well. Once Ruby showed up at the rabbi’s house with a litter of puppies and insisted the rabbi take one. When the family went to Israel one summer, Ruby looked after the dog.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe day of the assassination, we had our regular Friday night service, which became a memorial service for the president,\u201d Silverman said. \u201cJack was there. People were either irate or in tears, and Jack was neither. He came over and said, \u2018Good Shabbos, rabbi. Thank you for visiting my sister Eva in the hospital last week.\u2019 I thought that was rather peculiar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two days later, Silverman spoke to his Sunday morning confirmation class, expressing relief to the students that Lee Harvey Oswald was not Jewish or there might have been a \u201cpogrom\u201d in Dallas. He then switched on the radio and heard that a \u201cJack Rubenstein\u201d had killed the assassin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked,\u201d said Silverman. \u201cI visited him the next day in jail, and I said, \u2018Why, Jack, why?\u2019 He said, \u2018I did it for the American people.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
I interrupted Silverman, pointing out that other reports had Ruby saying he did it \u201cto show that Jews had guts.\u201d The rabbi sighed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, he mentioned that,\u201d Silverman said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t like to mention it. I think he said, \u2018I did it for the Jewish people.’ But I\u2019ve tried to wipe that statement from my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another person close to Ruby who tried, unsuccessfully, to block out the past is his nephew, \u201cCraig\u201d Ruby. (He asked that I not publish his real first name). His early memories are pleasant: Uncle Jack having a shot of whiskey with Craig’s father, doling out silver dollars to the kids, his flashy sports cars.<\/p>\n
Like millions of Americans, Craig watched Oswald’s murder live on television. Soon afterward, he and his mother heard the name of the gunman.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you ever hear the expression \u2018The color drained from her face?\u2019 I literally saw my mother\u2019s face go from flesh to green,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAt age 12, that was a little freaky to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Half a century after the fact, Craig is still bitter over the dramatic effect his childless uncle\u2019s act had on the extended family, including bomb threats and huge legal bills. Given his last name, Craig was an easy target for bullies during his junior high school years in Dallas. But worst of all was facing Uncle Jack himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne Sunday my dad insisted we go to see Jack in jail,\u201d Craig said. \u201cOutside, a police car\u2019s siren started up, and my uncle was standing there with this incredibly intense, wild-eyed look on his face, and he yelled, \u2018You hear that? You hear that? They\u2019re torturing Jews in the basement!\u2019 That particular experience was traumatic enough to where talking about it right now, 50 years later, is turning my gut into a knot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Silverman, who later testified before the Warren Commission, also vividly remembers his jailhouse visits.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn prison, he deteriorated psychologically,” the rabbi said. “One time I walked in and he said, \u2018Come on, rabbi, duck underneath the table. They\u2019re pouring oil on the Jews and setting it on fire.\u2019 He was quite psychotic.\u201d<\/p>\n
My initial connection to the Ruby family was through Eva, who I convinced to appear on ABC\u2019s \u201cGood Night America\u201d program in 1976. Later I visited her several times at her apartment in Los Angeles, where she once gave me the last piece of stationary from Jack\u2019s Carousel Club.<\/p>\n
She introduced me to her brothers — Earl, who owned a dry cleaning store in Detroit, and Sam, who lived in the Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar. Sam showed me the one picture he had of their immigrant parents as well as the rusting car Jack drove to the Dallas police station the morning he shot Oswald.<\/p>\n
In 1991, Earl allowed me to rendezvous with him in Dallas on the day he retrieved Jack\u2019s gun, which he won after a decades-long legal battle. I later showed the weapon on television for the first time since 1963, shortly before it was auctioned off for $220,000.<\/p>\n
The brothers also downplayed Jack\u2019s ties to the mob. Sam, who died in 2006 at age 90, leaned in close and lowered his voice, confiding: \u201cThese guys would come into Jack\u2019s club, and you had to be nice to them, ya know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically, when Earl chose a place for us to meet in Dallas the day he was given Jack’s gun, he picked an Italian restaurant better known for its links to the Mafia than its lasagna.<\/p>\n
Some conspiracy theorists believe Ruby was ordered to silence Oswald by his organized crime contacts. Others, who think the murder was an impulsive act, point to Ruby\u2019s fury over an anti-Kennedy advertisement in a Dallas newspaper the morning of the president\u2019s visit. It was paid for by a right-wing Jewish activist named Bernard Weissman, which Ruby thought put Jews in a bad light.<\/p>\n
We will never know for sure. What Craig Ruby knows for certain is that he did not mourn his uncle\u2019s death from cancer in 1967. His family had moved to Chicago by then and when he saw the headline announcing Ruby’s death, he felt like a weight had lifted.<\/p>\n
As for having a connection to one of the darkest moments in American history, Craig Ruby\u2019s view has not changed in 50 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish to God it hadn\u2019t happened to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Steve North is a broadcast journalist with CBS News who\u2019s been reporting on the Kennedy assassination since 1976.)<\/em><\/p>\n
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