nichevo:
“But your idea is that Ruby perceived (correctly or otherwise) a connection between himself and Oswald and acted to expunge any potential guilt that could be held over the heads of his coreligionists? As DB would say, Curious. ”
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I want to clarify what I wrote. Jack Ruby’s legal defense at his trial was, basically, that he shot Lee Harvey Oswald because Ruby 1) was afraid that the assassination would be blamed on the Jews and 2) was not in his right mind when he formulated and acted on that opinion.

Ruby’s legal defense did not include any information about Ruby’s gun smuggling to Cubans and about a prior association with Oswald during the course of such smuggling.

There is plenty of evidence that Ruby had such a prior association with Oswald. The best book on that subject is Ray and Mary La Fontaine’s book “Oswald Talked”, published in 1996.

Such an association does not necessarily prove, however, that Ruby ever expected Oswald to assassinate JFK or that he killed Oswald in order to prevent Oswald from revealing that the assassination was done on orders from the Mafia, the CIA, Lyndon Johnson or Texas oil millionaires.

Rather, I think Ruby truly was motivated by a fear that the public’s discovery of Ruby’s own prior association with Oswald would cause the public to blame the assassination on the Jews. Ruby feared that he himself might become the key link in the the public’s connecting the dots and then vengefully massacring the Jews throughout the USA.

In other words, his legal defense at a trial was a true explanation of his motivation, even though he always kept secret his prior association with Oswald.

By the way, one of the continuing mysteries of the assassination is Oswald’s destination after he left the scene of the crime. He returned to his boarding house to fetch a jacket and pistol and then started walking toward some unknown destination. If you extend his walking route on a map, the line leads almost directly to Ruby’s home.