In this piece I’d like to tell the stories of two different Jewish men who served in the public life of the State of New York and what happened on the day they met.
One of the men is D’Amato/Pataki political hatchet man Jeff Wiesenfeld.
I’ve received more than a few comments on my Facebook threads and in my email complaining I’ve been too sympathetic to Wiesenfeld in his CUNY contretemps with playwright Tony Kushner.
Since I have been unwavering in condemnation of Wiesenfeld;’s actions in this matter, I think the real complaint is that I’ve been too sensitive to the truth, which is often regarded on the left as something readily to be ignored when it does not suit the day’s prevailing fashion.
The problem is that while I condemned Wiesenfeld, I refused to agree that Wiesenfeld had distorted Kushner views overly much, refused to agree that Wiesenfeld had proven himself a homophobe, and refused to say that Wiesenfeld’s actions had risen to the legal level required to be met before he could be removed from the CUNY Board.
Let us review what I did say:
5/5/11: As a footnote in his mostly distinguished career, award winning playwright Tony Kushner, edited the anti-Zionist anthology which contains Brad Lander's infamous hate speech about Israel. Kushner once spoke at my Synagogue and blamed Israel for the failure of Camp David (when, in the words of Michael Bouldin, Ehud Barak had offered Arafat all he could hope for, with a sprig of parsley on the side).
I later asked my Rabbi whether he agreed with Kushner, and he said, “of course not, but we share our pulpit with many viewpoints.” I then asked him to let me know the next time we invited a conservative Republican; I'm still waiting (thank G-d).
Jeff Wiesenfeld’s description of Kushner’s views on Israel, while not 100% on all fours with the truth, is more accurate than not. Nonetheless, I'm don't see why that should preclude him from receiving an honorary degree (I’d give it to him just for getting Mary Louise Parker in a full frontal).
Not for nuthin, but one can be fairly certain that the rationale for the honorary degree has bupkes to do with Kushner’s writings about the Middle East.
Goldberg agrees, and calls Wiesenfeld counter productive (by inference) and a bozo (explicitly). Thanks Jeff, for conveying upon Kushner unearned martyrdom. CUNY Blocks Honor for Tony Kushner www.nytimes.com
5/7/11: B.C (before CUNY) very few knew or cared about Tony Kushner's rather ill-informed negative views on the Zionist enterprise. Now, thanks to Jeff Wiesenfeld, Kushner is a free speech hero, and his unpleasant views have taken center stage and will acquire a legitimacy they have not earned. Tony Kushner Is Now Likely to Get CUNY Honor www.nytimes.com
5/8/11: In the attached article, we learn that while Tony Kushner thinks that Israel should never have been created, he's now willing to concede them their continued existence.
Admittedly, this is also the position of Richard Cohen, who I like, but when Cohen says he supports Israel's right to exist, he doesn’t wink.
In contrast to Kushner, Cohen understands that continuing to exist encompasses the right to self defense.
We also learn that Kushner is on the advisory board of ”Jewish Voice for Peace,” a group which refuses to support a two state solution, because many of its “pacifist” members prefer that Israel be destroyed by the peaceful means of attrition.
I would give the man his honorary degree; I would even see his new play (can‘t resist anything about an Italian leftist named Marcantonio), if I could afford it.
But as much as I would defend to the death this man’s free speech rights, I have to admit how stressed I am by the monumental amount of effort being expended to defend views which are really symptomatic of ignorance or some strangely obsessive, ideologically driven animosity.
If some Likudnik had attacked Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton in the terms I witnessed Kushner denounce them in, leftists would be condemning him (justifiably), and holding signs of protest at the graduation.I would happily give Kushner his well-earned koved, but I wouldn’t invite the man for a Seder at my home. A Matter of Degrees opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
5/11/11: As Jeff Weisenfeld has subjected NY to massive embarrassment, I'm not sure he deserves to be defended.
But the truth needs a defense.
Weisenfeld was not that far from the truth in describing Tony Kushner’s views on Israel, which, as a result of Weisenfeld’s repugnant and stupid actions, got a public defense those views did not deserve (no matter how deserving Kushner was of his award and his right to free speech).
Ironically, given Weisenfeld’s willingness to brand Palestinians as sub-human, it is Weisenfeld who has recently been the victim of an unfair slur.
It’s been implied that Weisenfeld’s a homophobe. Yet, that does not seem fair, given Jeff’s Bill of Particulars about the Arab world includes a complaint that Arabs are homophobes
Here, in part, is what the crazy bastard said:: “… State of Israel, which is our sole democratic ally in the area sits in the neighborhood which is almost universally dominated by administrations which are misogynist, anti-gay, anti-Christi…an and societies that are doing today to the Christians what they did to the 500,000 Jews who lived in the Arab world in 1948 at the time of the creation of the State of Israel, dispossessing them, murdering them, deporting them.”
While this does not close the case, it appears at first glance that Weisenfeld can paraphrase the rappers and say "No Homo-phobe" Assembly Higher Ed Chair Suggests Homophobia At Play In Kushner Flap www.capitaltonight.com
5/12/11: More Loud Pushy Jews:
Goldberg: There's a move afoot… to force Jeffrey Wiesenfeld from the CUNY board. Wiesenfeld, it will be recalled, blocked John Jay College…from granting…Tony Kushner an honorary degree, because of Kushner's views on Israel…Wiesenfeld's campaign was wrong…but is this new situation much different? The faculty wants to purge the CUNY board of someone who has, by their lights, objectionable views, and who used his position as an appointed member of the CUNY board to advance those views.
Fallows: The obnoxious guy at CUNY is not having his "freedom of speech" threatened.
He's having his presence on the board called into question. Freedom of speech is a right; membership on the board is a privilege. FWIW.
GATE: Bad analysis; an honorary degree is also a privilege, not a right. If you’re making that argument, you’re echoing Wiesenfeld.
At any rate, the legal standard is that a CUNY trustee appointed by a governor can be removed by the governor only upon proof of “official misconduct, neglect of duties or mental or physical incapacity.” Blustery bloviating seems unlikely to meet the legal definition of “official misconduct.” Wiesenfeld has certainly not “neglected” his duties (which would probably be preferable to his diligence) and any mental incapacity was quite apparent at the time of his appointment (which should never have occurred), meaning our standing to raise it now would seem to have been waived. Kushner's Critic Has His Freedom of Speech Threatened (UPDATED) – Jeffrey Goldberg – National – www.theatlantic.com
5/13/11: This article gets almost everything right about Wiesenfeld/Kushner, though I think it is too tolerant of the opposition to Rick Jacobs, which mostly came from outside his movement, and therefore from people with no standing to mount such an effort. And though substantively right about Kushner, I would not have minded a bit more vitriol about some of his positions The Bright Red Line – Forward.com www.forward.com The Bright Red Line
Truth be told, Jeff Wiesenfeld and I go way back.
Both of our portfolios included serving liaison functions with the ultra-Orthodox for elected officials, so we were often at the same functions, though never on the same side; I suppose at some level we qualify as frenemies.
This is because Jeff has a great deal of charm, in spite of the fact he worked for mostly despicable people and said a lot of despicable things, most of them not particularly relevant or helpful to the tasks he was doing for his despicable principals and their despicable principles (such as they were).
But at some event or other, maybe a Hasidic wedding, maybe Leonard Stavisky’s funeral, Jeff and I were at the back of the room when I said something (I think it referred to a picture of Bronx County Democratic Leader Roberto Ramirez counting the New York’s 2000 Electoral Votes; I think I said that the caption should have read “34 votes for Al Gore and one for Guy Velella”) and I finally pierced his consciousness.
I was sure he had not liked the thing I said, and I was right, but he smiled and said, “you have a nasty and subversive sense of humor. I like that.”
One does not get a compliment like that every day of the week.
Jeff was most nasty about the Hevesi family; one might say he was a visionary ahead of his time, on the matter but that would be wrong, since there is almost no evidence that Wiesenfeld abhors corruption and at least some evidence to the contrary.
It may have been at Stavisky’s funeral where Jeff said “I never thought I would see the day when Forest Hills was not represented by a Jewish State Senator.”
Puzzled, I said “what about Dan Hevesi?”
And he said, “Jew is defined as the child of a Jewish mother.”
Jeff’s kids have no such worry, as he is both Jewish and a real mother.
Later Jeff would claim to have seen to it that Hevesi’s seat was eviscerated during reapportionment, ensuring that most of Forest Hills would not see a Jewish State Senator for a long, long time.
In preparing for this article, I went back to see if I’d previously written anything about Wiesenfeld.
I found two things.
One, from a Gateway column in March of this year, links an excerpt from The Daily Show about the fight over an eruv on long Island, and is a perfect portrayal of my ambivalence about Jeff:
“Miracle man Jon Stewart makes Jeff Wiesenfeld seem like a good guy. Maybe The Greatest Single Line Ever Spoken on 'The Daily Show' – Jeffrey Goldberg – Culture – The At www.theatlantic.com”
The other is from a “Daily Politics” thread from 2006 about whether Pataki would do a lame duck reappointment of Wiesenfeld to the CUNY Board, even though Jeff had supported Spitzer, done a million things to rub people the wrong way, and was now living in Great Neck.
ANOTHER REBBE: isn't Jeff on team Spitzer?…why would the Governor care what [he had] to say?
GATE: another rebbe: isn't the only question for George always whether they are still on "Team Pataki"? Forget about what they do in Great Neck. George wants to know what they will be up to in Des Moines.
THE REBBE: Wiesenfeld moved out of NYC several years ago. Doesn't that make him ineligible to serve on the CUNY board Gatemouth?
GATE: Rebbe: All's I said is that the Governor's got no loyalty to anyone but the Governor; in the context of the post I was answering, this was certainly not a pro-Weisenfeld comment, so I don't see why I should have to answer for Weisenfeld's lack of qualifications. Never cared for the man…
And then I told a short version of the story of Wiesenfeld’s meeting with Harvey Strelzin.
Harvey was a scholarly and distinguished attorney and law professor. Born in 1906, he was married in 1945 by Mayor LaGuardia. Given the name of his wife and who officiated, we can assume Strelzin lacked Wiesenfeld’s obsessive dislike for mixed marriages.
We also can assume s few other things. One is that Strelzin’s practice, which incorporated Criminal Law, led him to associations with some less than savory persons. As a result, in 1957, he was forced to resign his Chairmanship of the City’s Board of Assessors.
But Strelzin stayed active in public life, serving as a delegate to the 1967 State Constitutional Convention, where Hank Dullea’s book chronicles his role as a gadfly on esoteric legal issues.
In 1968, Williamsburg and Fort Greene’s Assemblyman Harold Cohn (father of Steve, grandfather of Warren) went to the bench and Harvey went to the Assembly at age 62 .
Democrats had lost their Majority, but Republicans ruled with a very narrow margin. Strangely enough, for an elderly freshman with no higher ambitions and an air of pretentiousness, Strelzin assumed a crucial role no one had asked him to play. Despite his interest in obscure legal documents, Strelzin had little interest in learning the details of the Bear Mountain Compact, and instead spent every evening sitting in a warm bath tub, reading the text of every bill.
This was just not done. Not since Al Smith had there been a member who read every bill.
More importantly, he followed up this practice by asking questions about nearly every bill.
Lots of questions. Annoying questions. Questions no one could answer.
With alarming frequency, bills started getting pulled from the floor.
This often delighted the Democrats, except that Harvey sometimes did it with bills their leadership wanted passed as well.
Democrats sometimes found Harvey somewhat less endearing when they took the Majority and the practice continued. Reformers and liberal often took delight in Harvey‘s antics, but not always, and even the most independent members sometimes grew weary of Harvey saying something about nearly every bill.
Yes, the leadership was often grateful to have been spared from errors which staff should have caught, but they would have been far more grateful to have been approached in private.
Still, the level of respect accorded Harvey did result in his Chairing the Consumer Affairs Committee, much to the consternation of Harvey’s targets, like the financial sector.
In 1974, a change came which ultimately set Harvey’s destiny.
Voting Rights Act litigation resulted in an off year redistricting of Brooklyn. The Hasidim, much to their consternation, were split in half in an effort to create two black districts where there had been one.
Initially, the results were not as expected.
In a five way race, Bed-Stuy’s 56th AD nearly gave its Democratic nomination to a Hasid, which was not even the Hasids’ intent. Al Vann won narrowly, while incumbent Cal Williams trailed in 3rd place.
Harvey, whose district now ran from Northside Williamsburg, through part of the Hasidic triangle before taking in parts of Bed-Stuy, plus Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill, Concord Village and parts of Gowanus, including the projects, held on initially.
But the truth was that while Strelzin was a dynamo in Albany, and was certainly diligent in bringing home the bacon for his district, he wasn’t really interested in spending his time in Brooklyn working his district, which, truth be told, he did not even live in.
The district was full of Yuppies and Buppies and getting fuller; Harvey had trouble relating to either group. In 1978, he faced a primary from one of each, defeating gay political pioneer Virginia Apuzzo and School Board member Velmanette Montgomery, neither of whom had any problems with Harvey on the issues.
Al Vann saw an opportunity. His vision was to build a Countywide organization working for Minority political empowerment, independent of the machine, and Vann saw Harvey’s seat as the most likely target for making his bones.
By 1980, Al Vann took the opportunity to lay the seeds of his vision, running a young employee of his Vannguard LDC named Roger Green for the Assembly against Harvey. There was no Yuppie this time, and Roger, with the strong backing of the Village Voice, was supported by many of the hipsters, who not knowing of the substantive work Harvey was doing in Albany (largely because Harvey had neglected to tell them), tended to view him as a tired old Seneca Club hack.
The Seneca Club, which controlled the election inspectors (which meant it controlled a bunch of jobs poor people wanted), was not without its black supporters, and they were supervised under the watchful eye of a superlative local operative named Carmine “Dusty“ DiChiara.
But Vann went all out, and was not immune to thuggish methods of persuasion when other methods did not work.
Harvey Strelzin woke on the day after the primary to find he lad lost his seat by little over thirty votes. The margin was small enough to ensure that his attorneys would prove enough errors to get a new election, and they did.
A new primary was ordered.
Under other circumstances, the machine might have taken a dive. Harvey’s District Leader, Councilman Abe Gerges, was on the outs with Mayor Koch, who wanted Gerges’ head on a silver platter. The Assembly leadership would not have been too sad to see Harvey’s departure, either.
But the 1980 Al Vann scared the bejesus out of the political establishment.
The full force of the Brooklyn machine came out to help Harvey, who this time won a victory by a margin not much different to the one he’d lost by earlier.
This time, Green went to court.
A new election by invitation only was called on two days notice. Both sides, tired of finding sufficient errors, agreed that all non-Democrats would be pulled from the binders then used, to ensure that only Democrats could vote.
By now, with quite a bit of justification, the black press issued a war cry that their birthright was being stolen. Those black locals who had backed Harvey twice in a month did not have the will to do it again.
Meanwhile, the Village Voice made portrayed the race as one between reform and evil, which was untrue in either case.
At four PM on election day #3, a political operative walked into the Seneca club and said “all the white have voted, there’s no one left to pull.”
Bill Gelfond looked at the turnout numbers and said “it’s not enough. We have to pull Hispanics blind.”
Someone said “that’s a big risk,’” and Bill responded, “it would be, if victory was mathematically possible any other way.“
So, they pulled Hispanics blindly, and it nearly worked.
But Green still won.
From this victory, Vann, together with Major Owens, ended up building “The Coalition for Community Empowerment,” an independent anti-machine minority political movement.
In 1982, they elected four out of five black Brooklyn Assembly Members–Vann (who beat Cal Williams’ daughter LoRita) Green, William “Frank” Boyland (who beat Tom Fortune, a far more senior incumbent he’d been redistricted with) and Clarence Norman (who beat incumbent Woody Lewis). They took a seat in Congress (Owens) but were less successful with the State Senate, with candidates Carl Andrews and Johnny Cousar losing their races.
Still, Empowerment was on a roll, which continued until they became the establishment, playing crucial role in electing David Dinkins and getting one of their own, Clarence Norman, chosen as Brooklyn’s first black County Leader.
Green went on to become a pretty good Assemblyman for a time, and a loud and articulate voice for the voiceless on social services issues, but was eventually forced to resign after a conviction for petty griftering. He returned soon afterward, but after two close races from an ambitious young comer, and almost certain defeat the third time around, gave it up for a hopeless race for Congress.
Clarence Norman was convicted at two different felony trials, while Frank Boyland gave up his seat five minutes after his last re-election, to ensure his son election in a special held to fill the vacancy where Frank personally determined who would be the Democratic nominee. Frank’s son Junior, has just been indicted for alleged corruption. Frank himself got his brains bashed in in a comeback race for City Council.
Carl Andrews eventually made it to the State Senate, before losing a race for Congress and is currently a lobbyist at the center of the Racetrack Empire scandal. Meanwhile, Al Vann, now a Councilman, is almost universally regarded as a hack by the sort of people, both white and black, who once saw Empowerment as Brooklyn’s great black hope.
Leading me to ask if the considerable and undeniable good done by all these men was really worth the loss from Albany of Evil Hack Harvey Strelzin.
At any rate, Harvey went back to Albany to mount a successful battle against the banks’ efforts to make usury rates more flexible. After leaving his seat, he work part time for the Assembly, spotting the same sort of errors in advance that he used to spot on the floor.
Sometimes the leadership even paid attention.
He also went back to law full time. The next to last time I saw him, in 1992, at age 86, was at a Chinese restaurant on Montague Street. Harvey was pedantically lecturing some locals from Brooklyn Heights about the important murder case he was about to try upstate.
I saw him again the next year. It was in Williamsburg, where the local Hasids still revered Harvey as a hero, and had chosen him to be Master of Ceremonies for some lunch the Hasidic leadership was holding at the Opportunity Development Association.
I was not sure of the purpose for the lunch, but Dave Loglisci, then of Marty Connor’s office, and now a recent Hevesi Deputy turned convicted felon, had tipped me off to it. The Dinkins-Giuliani race was in progess, and though it seemed like the Satmar were headed in the direction of Rudy, enough smoke was being blown in the direction of Connor and others keep up the illusion that they were still in play. It seemed like a good idea to keep an eye on the leadership.
The guest speaker that afternoon was none other than Jeff Wiesenfeld,
Jeff regaled the crowd, mostly local merchants, with a speech about how a Giuliani administration would be the beginning of a new age of enlightenment where businesses would no longer be overwhelmed by Sanitation summonses.
Harvey interrupted Jeff to tell him, with all due respect, that if people were given summonses it was because they had violated the law.
A fight ensured with both parties getting progressively louder, and redder in the face.
Rabbi David Niederman eventually interrupted to try to smooth things over, but the battle continued as the lunch broke up.
Some time later, I cannot recall how long, my eyes happened to be glancing over the obituaries in the Times, when I noticed a paid death notice saying Harvey had passed away.
Years later, I witnessed Wiesenfeld lose his temper at some event, and said, “who do you think you were talking to, Harvey Strelzin?”
“You know that story?”
“I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Angry old man. You know, he died that day. They say the argument with me killed him.”
He shrugged his shoulders as if it didn’t mean a thing to him.
At least that is how I remembered it, but in preparing the article for publication, my research found that Strelzin had died in December. Trusting Wiesenfeld, always a mistake, more than my memory, I reconciled his version of the events with what I remembered, which is also always a mistake.
Then I saw this post in ny comments:
Deputy Commissioner of Strelzinic Information: With all due respect to the apparent homicidal abilities of Mr. Wiesenfeld, the facts of the matter don't add up. It should be noted that Harvey was suffering from cancer, the signs of which began to appear late that summer. Before his death late in the evening of December 8, 1993, had spent several days in Beth Israel hospital before being moved to hospice care in a comatose state. His obituary wouldn't have made the Times until December 10. Hate to break it to Mr. Wiesenfeld, but he didn't kill Harvey Strelzin.
As they say in Law School, Res ipsa loquitur.
But sue me if I don’t regard Tony Kushner as the low point of Jeff Wiesenfeld’s life.