In Sunday’s Times, Ed Koch speculates on how he will be remembered, talks about making up with former enemies, dodges a question about his sexual orientation – and waxes fierce about Judaism. Here’s the epitaph on his tombstone (yes, it’s ready to go – Hizzoner never waited for anyone, why should he wait for the Almighty?)
He will be buried in the nondenominational Trinity Church Cemetery in Upper Manhattan under a tombstone that quotes the last words of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded in 2002 by Islamic terrorists (“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish”) and includes the most familiar Jewish prayer, in English and Hebrew, (“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”) and the epitaph the former mayor wrote after his stroke:
“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”
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