BACKGROUND

For decades Howard Katz was the focal point and coordinator for Shmira at most funeral homes except Torchinski in the Washington, DC area.  I served the Washington DC community as the primary Shomer for over 12 years.  This enabled me to not only recite the Tehillim and other appropriate prayers for the souls of our dearly departed family members and in their honor and blessed memory I would study Torah, Tanakh, and the Siddur.  The foundation of all of the Judaics and Holy Scripture studies in this website is a direct product of years of service performing Shmira, praying, and studying our Tanakh, Siddur, and Judaism.

On one of my Shmira assignments Kaye also came to sit Shmira for one of the people who passed away.    This was during a difficult snow storm period and I had performed Shmira continuously around the clock at the funeral home for more than 7 days.  During this unexpected extended period I apparently got a minor stain on my shirt.  And Kaye saw this and went out of his way to file a complaint against me with the funeral home management.  This and other disgusting aspects of his behavior led me to understand that this was a very disgusting person.  Only later did I learn about the episode on “To Catch a Preditor” about Kaye being a “rabbi”, working with kids all the while as he prowled the web looking for children to prey upon, and how he was caught, tried, and found guilty of being a pedophile sexual predator, being sentenced to some 6 1/2 years in prison, and being registered in the national sex offender data base.  Having violated all norms of Judaism and the rabbinate some synagogues rightfully barred Kaye from attending their synagogues.  As Howard Katz was experiencing age related problems in performing his duties with the Shmira assignments some funeral home who knew my years of service contacted me directly to formally address the Shmira assignments.  And the Jewish Funeral Practices committee did not have any direct involvement with the actual performance of Shmira Services were asked to step in and address the issues.  They had handled negotiations with Jewish Funeral homes for community funeral packages providing affordable solutions for the Jewish Community.  But they apparently did not have much direct experience with who were the Shomrim and so forth.  So they somehow connected with Kaye and started giving Kaye a role in Shmira from assignments to performing Shmira.  If his involvement were limited to phone calling and making assignments I would not have a problem.  But as it turned out the employees at the funeral homes were not informed at that time that there was a convicted criminal, felon, and sexual predator working among them.  The people for whom Kaye was sitting Shmira were most likely never informed about Kaye’s criminal sexual predatory behavior. And families of other deceased people who did not ask for Shmira but may have asked for Tahara or not for family members were in the special wing of the funeral home with the Tahara and other facilities also did not know about Kaye’s criminal sexual behaviors.  But worse yet the funeral home at night would lock off that wing of the building giving Kaye total unsupervised access to all the bodies that were having Shmira or Tahara or other services in the unsecured area.

WOULD YOU WANT KAYE TO HAVE UNSUPERVISED ACCESS TO YOUR FATHER OR MOTHER?

Since Kaye has been re-arrest for parole violations since the original prison term he served I do not know if the Funeral Practices Committee found someone more suited for this holy position and work or not.  But if Kaye still has any role in Shmira of our dearly departed families I would strongly recommend that the various Synagogues and Jewish organization address this matter, come to their conclusions, and make there position very clear to the Jewish Funeral Committee and the Jewish Funeral Homes regarding Kaye.