New York – Upon hearing the news of Ed Koch’s death Friday morning, retired FBI agent, Joe Perischini, told the Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/12khLgf) about a tense, but memorable meeting with the former mayor in the 1980s.
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Working as a street-agent assigned to a prosecution team investigating NYC’s legendary Parking Violations Bureau scandal in 1986, Perischini said speculation pointing to the possibility of the mayor being involved in the scandal became so rampant that a decision was made to request an interview with the mayor–and to everyone’s surprise, Mayor Koch agreed.
Perischini recalled his ‘cordial’ introduction to the mayor, after which he and another agent were seated across from Koch in the mayor’s office. But that, according to Perischini, was where the pleasantries ended.
Within minutes Koch determined the line of their questioning. Koch became agitated, boisterous, and defiant—pounding his desk, while staring down Perischini and his fellow agent, peppering them with blunt retorts and profanities. At one point, Perischini recalled, the mayor turned the tables, challenging the agents to come with more if they had it.
Perischini referred Koch’s overall response to speculation of his involvement in the scandal as an unqualified “New York No,” and he recalled shaking his head in disbelief as to what he had just witnessed upon leaving.
Looking back, Perischini had kind thoughts for the mayor today and said he was a good public servant.
I wonder how koch will be able to stare at the accusing malachim on his eating treif and advocating for gay rights. In those days it was a fight against gay rights not even dreaming that one crazy day it will be gay marriage. Soon the fight will be about marrying your sister or pet dog. Its coming my friends. Society is falling fast. Koch was no savior for this city. It was Rudy who turned things around. Let’s get the facts straight. Koch can be eulogized in the reform temple and get buried in a church. That’s his extend of judaism. A disgrace to our people.
My friend, I’m afraid you’re the one who’s in for the unpleasant surprise when you come to judgment after 120 years. The real disgrace to our people is not Koch but people like you, who take a Torah whose ways are supposed to be pleasant (“darchei noam”) and whose view of what makes a person a mensch go well beyond whether or not he eats treyf. What about all the frum sex abusers, money launderers, wife beaters, tax cheats, get-refusers, haters of non-Jews, et al, who keep kosher beyond the call of duty — mehadrin l’mehadrin, kemach yasham, cholov yosroel, pas yisroel, etc., but are evil-doers on a level Koch never was? Yoiu really think kashrus is more important in Hashem’s eyes than a person’s inner qualities? Kashrus is one of many things Hashem commands of us, but you wouldn’t know it from small-minded Yidden like you who take the Majestic Sovereign of the Universe who created all creatures and turn Him into a mean little lamdan who thinks the world begins and ends with whether someone eats treyf.
So you Howard declare that G-d does not care about eating treif or being mechalel sh
abbos. I think you are confusing with the new testament our Torah. G-d does care what we eat. He destroyed the entire world because of gay marriage 4100 years during Noachs era.