Abe’s Other List
What do you get when you put a rabbi, a Troma actress and a recently paroled
parking-garage magnate in a room together?
Abe Hirschfeld’s 84th birthday!
On the frosty morning of Dec. 14, Mr. Hirschfeld celebrated his second
birthday since being paroled in August 2002 after a jail sentence resulting
from his efforts to hire a hit man to kill a former business partner.
The soirée was held at Madison Avenue home of the onetime owner
of the New York Post, where the craggy, unshaven birthday boy—dressed
in a red smoking jacket and a checkered red-and-white bowtie—smoked
a Cohiba that he admitted was not an acceptable part of his diet. "My
son-in-law sent me a package, and it’s my first cigar in eight months.
Otherwise I wouldn’t smoke it," he said.
Mr. Hirschfeld was comfortably perched on the couch, at a roughly 30-degree
angle, next to a black-clad actress named Lisa Gaye, star of Troma’s
Class of Nuke ’Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown and Sgt. Kabukiman
N.Y.P.D. Ms. Gaye also claimed to be appearing in a forthcoming Sci-Fi
Channel reality show that she couldn’t discuss "because of
the $5 million confidentiality agreement."
"The Muslims are the best friends the Jews have," Mr. Hirschfeld
said suddenly as he glanced out the living-room window, which overlooked
Madison Avenue. "Throughout history, there has never been a Holocaust
in a Muslim country—not like in Poland, which was extremely anti-Semitic."
In fact, he said, the root of our President’s problems is the lack
of "Arabs" in the cabinet.
Mr. Hirschfeld keeps an imaginary list of men responsible for "the
destruction of New York." At the top is Governor George Pataki. The
birthday boy pointed to the wall across the room, which was adorned with
an Al Hirschfeld pen-and-ink drawing of the Governor wearing a yarmulke.
"There’s Pataki at my 75th birthday. He’s lighting the
Hanukkah candles. I saw George Pataki on Thursday. We are not on good
terms. But he said to me, ‘Only you can make peace in the world.’
I was very shocked."
Standing by the portrait was Mr. Hirschfeld’s red-haired daughter
Rachel, who recently finished law school and was, allegedly, one of the
seven people on her father’s very real "hit list"—all
of whom were supposed to die, at Mr. Hirschfeld’s behest, at the
hands of Larry Davis, a convicted cop-shooter. (Mr. Hirschfeld, it should
be noted, has consistently denied these allegations.) The Post, which
Mr. Hirschfeld briefly owned for 16 mutinous days, reported that Rachel
was in good company: Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman was
also on the list of those slated for termination.
Mr. Hirschfeld dropped a couple more names from his other list—the
one of people killing the city: Randy Daniels, Rudolph Giuliani ("He
was a very good undertaker—nothing else. If there’s a funeral,
he’s there") and Rupert Murdoch. There seemed to be a lingering
bitterness about Mr. Murdoch, "who stole from me the Post."
But he was not at all unhappy about a New York Law Journal article—it’s
part of his press kit, "Hirschfeld Health and Economy"—entitled
"The Law of Bribery in New York." Here’s the gist: P.L.
§215.22, known colloquially as "Hirschfeld’s Law,"
was created in response to Abe’s conduct during his first criminal
trial on the hit-man matter. So grateful was Mr. Hirschfeld for the hung
jury that he reportedly gave or offered to give $2,500 to each of the
jurors—not illegal, but sternly frowned upon. The State Legislature
decided that the incident "set a dangerous precedent in that it increases
the likelihood that a juror’s independence might be compromised
… by the mere possibility of receiving some future monetary benefit
or other ‘reward’ from a party to the proceeding." (At
a second trial, Mr. Hirschfeld was eventually found guilty of second-degree
criminal solicitation.)
Mr. Hirschfeld smiled broadly and pointed to the article. "I’m
the only one who has a law named after him," he said. Shortly after
that, his grandchildren, Benjamin, Jonathan and Matthew, brought out an
enormous chocolate cake. As he stood up, The Transom noticed that Mr.
Hirschfeld’s fly was open.
Rabbi Schlomo Hagar, a friend of Abe’s for a mere three months,
gave a rousing, nonsensical speech during which he demanded that everyone
chant: "Long live Abe Hirschfeld! Long live Abe Hirschfeld!"
Everyone did, with a lessening sense of urgency each time.
And then came the jokes.
"It’s Christmas time," said Abe, "and I realized
that Jesus couldn’t have been Jewish … "
(At this point, a gray-haired man to the left whispered, "Here we
go …. ")
" … since he went to the Last Supper, not the early-bird special!"
Everyone laughed heartily.
"Barbara Walters said to Bill Clinton, ‘Monica Lewinsky says
you have a very small penis.’ ‘Not true,’ said Clinton.
‘She just has a very big mouth.’"
"Awwww!" said the crowd. "Come on, Abe …. "
—Elon R. Green
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