As it turns out, the bizarre story of Lorenz Kraus killing his elderly parents Franz and Theresia Kraus in 2017 and burying them in their own backyard, on Crestwood court near Whitehall Road just a few blocks from the Albany Jewish Community Center, and admitting to it on TV in 2025 – has a conspiracist antisemitism twist to it, too.

And we learn of all this between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur 2025. What’s the message for us? What to learn from the fact that this terrible story on a quiet windy pleasant street in Albany NY comes out now?

I guess on a basic note, this story teaches us our past will catch up with us. It did take from 2017 to 2025, but finally did catch up with him. Hopefully, we’re not dealing with severity of crime that Lorenz Kraus did, but we all have past misdeeds that need dealing with.

I’m also curious as to the psychology of what made Lorenz Kraus confess to the murder of his parents on TV with CBS6-Albany anchor Greg Floyd. Good journalism, probing questioning & investigative skills to be sure, but what made him confess like that, after so many years?

Perhaps it was the financial investigation pressure (I’m assuming he knew that was ongoing)?  Or maybe it was the difficulty of keeping such a deep dark troubling secret so long! The need to tell someone! To unburden oneself? To show his power? To make his point? To…?

May we never carry such extremely dark troubling secrets, but to a far lesser degree and on a non-violent scale we all have some matters that can use unburdening, to express, to verbalize, to regret. Thinking this is some of what Yom Kippur is about, and its emphasis on verbal confession, how it helps to verbalize a confession. If nothing else, even to just to acknowledge it, to get it out of our system a bit.

and re the antisemitism conspiratorial aspect? Look, not everyone (thankfully!) jumps from rhetoric to murder, but the dividing line gets thinner & riskier. Don’t dismiss the potential impacts of hateful rhetoric. And those who hate Jews, don’t only hate Jews. It often starts there, but doesn’t end there.