Ed Koch's Tombstone!

A larger-than-life Ed Koch arranged it so that even in death he’d remain a New Yorker.

Five years ago, the former mayor, then 83, paid $20,000 for a plot in the nondenominational cemetery of Trinity Church in Washington Heights — the only active graveyard in Manhattan that was still accepting new burials.

“I don’t want to leave Manhattan, even when I’m gone,’’ he told The Associated Press. “This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me.’’

Koch consulted with rabbis to make sure that resting in peace in a non-Jewish cemetery was “doable,’’ he told the Times.

With the approval of the cemetery, the gate just north of the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 153rd Street near Koch’s plot reads, “The Jewish Gate.’’

Not stopping there, the mayor chose his own tombstone, and had inscriptions carved into the stone that proudly honor his Jewish heritage, proclaim his love of his city and its people and his country, and honor the slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

On the headstone, which bears the Star of David, Koch inscribed the moving last words Pearl spoke before he was publicly murdered in Pakistan 11 years ago: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.’’

In an interview with the Journal last year, Koch said that he believed “that statement is as important as the most holy of all statements in Jewish ritual.’’

The former mayor also inscribed the most important Jewish declaration of faith, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.’’

And Koch also wrote his own epitaph to make sure people knew how he’d like to be remembered:

“He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the city of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II.’’

In typical Koch style, he had the tombstone installed in 2009.

“I think he wanted to be prepared,” his spokesman George Arzt said yesterday. He said the former mayor also “mapped out” his funeral arrangements.

At Monday’s services at Temple Emanu-El on East 65th Street at Fifth Avenue, “there will be three flags: the United States, Israel and New York City,’’ Arzt said.

The planned speakers include Mayor Bloomberg and three of Koch’s longtime friends, lawyer James Gill, John LoCicero and Diane Coffey, who was Koch’s chief of staff at City Hall.

Israeli Consul General Ido Aharoni and a representative of President Obama may also speak.

Letter to Satmar Rebbi, R' Zalman Leib Teitelbaum

The following "Letter to the Editor: appeared  in this week's  Mishpacha Magazine..I applaud the editors for allowing this letter to appear!

Satmar Rebbi spewing hate against the host country, Israel

Let's Get Real
(Satmar's Inner Sanctum/Issue 443)
Kol hakovod to the Satmar Rav, Reb Zalman Leib,  for adhering to the philosophy of his holy ancestors. However, in reality, the Satmar Rav has recognized the State of Israel, de facto, merely by visiting it.
 If it weren't for the Zionists, the Rav wouldn't have an airport in which to land. If it weren't for the IDF, he wouldn't feel safe being in the medinah. If it weren't for the Israeli police (plaincloths, no doubt), he wouldn't have the security force needed. If it weren't for the Zionist infrastructure, he wouldn't have roads to drive on, or gas for his rented car, for that matter. Nor would he have plumbing, electricity, or any of the other infrastructure necessary for this chasunah.
 If it weren't for the medina, I doubt if the chasunah would be taking place there at all. (What would Palestine look like if it weren't for the medinah, chas v'shalom?).

The time has come to recognize facts on the ground. While the medinah was not formed by the biggest yerei Shamayim, and while there are those in the medinah who seek to undermine the very basis of the holy Torah, the fact is that the medinah exists and all Jews benefit from it, whether they want to admit it or not.
A. Schwartz
Brooklyn, NY.

Sen Cruz destroys Chuck Hagel the Anti-Semite appointed by Obama for Dept of Defense

Brooklyn Rabbi arrested for sexually abusing teens, Video

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish school principal was arrested and charged with sexual abuse after abusing several of his own students, according to police reports in Brooklyn, New York.

The Brooklyn yeshiva leader was arrested Wednesday night on a dozen counts of sexual abuse involving three teenage boys, police said.

Yoel Malik, 33, of Brooklyn had sex with one of the teenagers and ran his hand on two others, a police source said.

The teens were 14 or 15-years-old at the time of the alleged incident. Sexual assault on one child took place in a hotel, a police source said, adding that another victim fled to a different hotel after Malik started rubbing his back.
Another teenager was sexually abused in the suspect's car, on the way to school, when Malik allegedly rubbed the boy's groin through his pants.

"This is vicious gossip,"the wife of Malik, visibly shaken, Rachel, said in the family home while her husband was being questioned at the 79th Precinct police station before being charged. "He is a good man. I don’t know not what to say. I hope it's not true," she said.
In addition to the 12 counts of sexual abuse, Malik is accused of 11 counts of endangering the welfare

of a child, four counts of criminal sexual act and one count of touching by force.

He was arrested at 10:25 pm Wednesday. There was no deadline for the alleged attacks on the unidentified teens. The Yeshiva currently is not in operation due to financial problem.
Police learned of the victims of an anonymous call to the rape hotline.
The school was located in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, New York, and was under the leadership of Satmar.

Dovid Kohn of Monsey pleads guilty to sexual abuse of a 12 year old and gets 8 years

With his wife and two daughters sitting in a Rockland County courtroom, Dovid Kohn of Monsey admitted Monday that he had oral sex with one of his daughter’s female friends beginning when the girl was 12 years old. Kohn, 60, an Israeli national living illegally in the United States, faces eight years in state prison when sentenced May 7 on his guilty plea to first-degree course of sexual conduct with a child. He will likely be deported after serving his sentence, Judge William Nelson told him in a New City courtroom. Nelson said he would sentence Kohn to eight years — though the prosecution wanted nine years — and 10 years’ probation, and place him on the sex offender registry. He would pay fees of $1,025.

Kohn admitted to having oral sex with the girl between 2004 and 2006 in a plea that covered 35 counts of sexual abuse. The girl, now 21, reported the acts to authorities last year. At that time she also spoke with Kohn about the sexual acts while wearing a body wire and through telephone calls recorded by Ramapo police. 

Kohn challenged the charges, sitting through one hearing on Jan. 21 when prosecutor Arthur Ferraro played audiotapes of his conversations with the woman, whose identity is being withheld. The hearing was to continue Monday on the admissibility of the tapes, when he pleaded guilty. “We’re just happy the victim didn’t have to testify in open court and be subject to cross-examination,” Ferraro said. 

Kohn’s lawyers, former District Attorney Kenneth Gribetz and Deborah Wolikow Loewenberg, said Kohn first found it hard to plead guilty in front of his family. They noted he could have faced 25 years on many of the 35 counts. Under questioning from Ferraro, Kohn admitted to having oral sex with the girl at his house at 65 Saddle River Road. According to one transcript of their recorded conversation, the woman told Kohn “you ruined my life,” saying she cut herself and tried to commit suicide. She told him many men in the religious community would not marry her because of what he did to her. Kohn told her he wanted to apologize and didn’t want to hurt her. He accused her of trying to blackmail him when she said she would go to the police if he didn’t admit what he had done to her. He said he would “fight like hell.”

Authorities are not sure of Kohn’s identity, though he said in court that he’s lived in Monsey for the past 25 to 28 years. Kohn said he was born in Israel and overstayed his visa in the United States. “We have asked the FBI to assist us in determining his actual identity,” said Sgt. John Lynch of the Ramapo police.

Frum Doctor Shot to death in exam room in California

Newport Beach, CA - A doctor was fatally shot in an examination room of an Orange County medical office, and the man who police believe shot him was taken into custody in the same room without a struggle, authorities said.

Several 911 calls reported six or seven shots fired Monday afternoon at the medical office near Hoag Hospital in Orange County, Newport Beach police spokeswoman Kathy Lowe told The Associated Press. Officers found a man dead from gunshot wounds in a patient examination room, Lowe said.

They took into custody another man in the room.

The victim was a doctor, Deputy Chief David McGill told the Los Angeles Times. The doctor’s name and relationship to the gunman weren’t immediately clear.

However the Daily Pilot and other news sources identified the victim as 53 year old Dr. Ronald Gilbert, A neighbor who lives near Gilbert’s large hacienda-style home in Huntington Harbour said the family was “really nice.” “I have nothing but good things to say,” neighbor Betty Combs said. “They are practicing orthodox Jews. On Saturdays, they dressed to the nines and walked to synagogue.”

Witnesses told several media outlets the doctor was a urologist. The floor of the shooting included the offices for Orange Coast Urology, which lists three doctors on its staff. A phone message at the clinic said the office was closed.

Becky Calderwood said she works two doors down from the office where the shooting took place, and said the gunman was a patient.

“I sit right at the front desk, I would have caught the first bullet,” Calderwood told the Times.

No one else was injured or targeted, Lowe said. “It does appear to be an isolated incident,” she said.

Detectives were interviewing employees and patients in the building.

Kristen Cotty, who works as an office supervisor at a lab one floor above, said she thought the gunfire was construction noises.

“What’s going on with the world today?” she told the Orange County Register. “I mean, schools, now I got to worry about going to work. This has got to stop.”

Police investigate as medical personnel exit the scene outside a medical office near Hoag Hospital where shots were fired on Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, in Newport Beach, Calif. Police say a doctor has been shot and killed and a man is in police custody. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Joshua Sudock)

Police and medical personnel stand outside a medical office near Hoag Hospital where shots were fired on Monday, Jan. 28, 2013, in Newport Beach, Calif. Police say a doctor has been shot and killed and a man is in police custody. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Leonard Ortiz)

Frum Girl Suspended from Yeshiva because she sang on "The Voice"

An Orthodox school in Israel suspended Ophir Ben-Shetreet, a 17-year-old girl, after she sang on the Israeli version of The Voice, arguing that her appearance violated the laws of kol isha that forbid men from hearing women (who are not their wives, mothers or young daughters) sing.

Sexual Abuse Case against Yeshiva Torah Temimah will go forward!

A Brooklyn judge has rejected an Orthodox Jewish day school’s attempt to settle a civil lawsuit brought by a boy who said he had been sexually abused by one of the school’s teachers.

Supreme Court Justice Jack Battaglia denied Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah Inc’s motion to enforce a confidential settlement because the parents of the alleged abuse victim changed their minds and rejected the deal after they signed it in 2011.

“The court cannot say on the record presented that the refusal of (plaintiff)‘s parents to proceed with the settlement in accordance with the Feb. 15, 2011, settlement agreement is unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious,” Battaglia wrote in a ruling Wednesday.

The underlying lawsuit was one of several filed by alleged abuse victims and their parents against Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah, which operates Orthodox Jewish day schools in Brooklyn, the ruling said

The case was brought in 2006 by a boy who said he was abused by Rabbi Joel Kolko during the 2003-2004 school year. It was not immediately clear whether Kolko still teaches at Yeshiva Torah Temimah.

The boy, who according to the ruling is now 15 years old, is not named in the decision. His parents are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The claims include negligence in hiring, supervising and retaining Kolko and breach of fiduciary duty.

In 2011, the parties reached a confidential settlement agreement, which was signed by the boy’s parents, the ruling said. Days later, the parents reversed course and said they no longer agreed to the settlement, which they said had been signed under “duress,” the ruling said.

The parents also said they had come under fire from some members of their community. A rabbi at the school told them they would “bankrupt” the yeshiva and destroy it in the way “the Nazis (have) destroyed” the “yeshiva in Europe,” the ruling said.

Lawyers for the school disputed that the parents had signed under duress, according to the ruling. They moved for an order approving an infant compromise, which would allow the court to approve a settlement involving a claim brought by a minor.

Battaglia rejected the request.

The settlement “might well be found to be in the infant plaintiff’s best interests, but that is not the standard for a settlement contrary to the judgment of the infant plaintiff’s parent and counsel,” the judge wrote.

The school and a lawyer for the plaintiff did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday.

CRIMINAL CASE

Kolko, a first-grade teacher who taught at the Yeshiva Torah Temimah in Brooklyn, was indicted by local prosecutors in 2007 for sexually abusing a former student. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to three years’ probation.

He was rearrested in 2010 after prosecutors accused him of violating a protective order that barred him from interacting with the boy who had accused him of abuse. Following a jury trial last year, Kolko was acquitted of violating the protective order.

A lawyer who represented Kolko in the criminal case did not immediately return a request for comment and Kolko could not be reached for comment.

It is unclear if the boy in the criminal case is the same as the one in the civil lawsuit before Battaglia. It is unclear whether Kolko still teaches at Yeshiva Torah Temimah.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has come under scrutiny in recent years for his office’s handling of sex abuse cases involving members of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. In some media reports Hynes has been accused of helping community leaders cover up high-profile accusations. Defending his office’s actions, Hynes has said secrecy may be necessary in some cases to help shield victims from harassment and intimidation.

In 2009, Hynes created a program called Kol Tzedek—Hebrew for “voice of justice”—to help victims of sexual abuse in Brooklyn’s insular Orthodox Jewish communities come forward. The program has led to 112 arrests and there are about 50 cases pending, according to Hynes’s office.

On Tuesday, a Brooklyn judge sentenced an Orthodox counselor, Nechemya Weberman, to 103 years in prison for abusing a young female patient.

The case is John Doe No. 4. v. Yeshiva & Mesivta Torah Temimah Inc, New York State Supreme Court, Kings County, No. 37492/2006.

For the plaintiffs: Frank Floriani and Glenn Nick of Sullivan Papain Block McGrath & Cannavo.

For the defendant: Avraham Moskowitz and M. Todd Parker of Moskowitz & Book.

Rand Paul to Hillary:If I were President I would have relieved you of your position! Video

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Weberman's tiny victim took down a big monster!

Some things are worse even than dying.

The shy, pretty victim, now all of 18, summoned enough courage into her 100-pound body to stand up and face her tormentor yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court. For unrepentant monster Nechemya Weberman stole this young lady’s youth, her purity, her very identity.

And he wouldn’t dare look her in the face.

Weberman, the sadistic Satmar freak, savagely sexually abused the young girl for three years, burning her flesh with lighters and telling her she was human garbage. Yesterday, he slumped his gigantic girth into a courtroom chair, looking slightly annoyed, as a Brooklyn judge sentenced him to 103 years in prison.

He’ll likely die there, in the close company of his fellow scum of the earth.

It’s not enough.

His victim’s torment will never end.

She walked into the courtroom, petite and blonde, and spoke in a small voice. But her message rang out into the cheap seats, loud and clear.

She said, heartbreakingly, that the abuse she suffered at the hands of the ghoulish Weberman, 54, which began at age 12, was worse than cold-blooded murder.

For murder victims, the torment, mercifully, ends.

“Personally, I feel that the outcome of abuse is, in a way, far worse than murder,’’ she said, dissolving into tears.

“With murder, the person is dead and it is final. By abuse, the victim experiences death over and over. Again and again.’’

He stared at the table, at his hands, straight ahead. He wouldn’t look at her.

This young lady survived her near-destruction. “I would cover up the burn marks inflicted on my body he used to serve his sadistic pleasures,’’ she recounted.

In fact, she thrived — getting married and attending college classes, her husband said after court.

She had to make it. If only to make sure that this never happens again to another child.

As she spoke, the painfully young woman sounded wiser than her years, as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. She pressed on.

She pointed an accusing finger at her own Satmar community, whose leaders she told me last month resembled the “Jewish Taliban.’’

Her neighbors betrayed her, shunned her, threatened her. And now that she has left a home she loved, the harassment persists.

In a way, the abuse of strangers was even more brutal than that inflicted by the sick and twisted Weberman.

Because the Satmars knew she was a victim of torture by Weberman, who was sent to counsel the girl by her school after she questioned her religion.

And her people — my people — didn’t care about her.

To some in the Satmar realm, keeping Weberman happy, burying his dirty laundry, maiming a child, was easier than finding justice.

This young lady never set out to be a hero. Only to survive. But now, she has to keep going to help other abused children stand up to reprehensible perverts like Weberman.

“I really hope (and pray) that this case sets a precedent and will tell other victims: You have a voice, even if you think no one will believe you and even when you’re scared of being chased and crushed by your community.’’

To the very end, Weberman was defiant.

He declined to speak in his own defense. He didn’t apologize. He refused to as much as glance at his accuser. And his lawyer, George Farkas, continued spinning the fiction that Weberman was the victim of a made-up story.

As Weberman was taken away in handcuffs, one thing became clear. He won’t be out there, getting his hands on young ladies.

For that, we have to thank one young victim who dared cry out in pain.