Paterson Praised As Friend Of Jewish Community,Elliot Resnick, <i>Jewish Press Staff Reporter</i>

The Jewish community can look forward to a bright future with New York's new governor, David A. Paterson, several city and state officials told The Jewish Press.

"I think it will be a real positive for us," said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. "I've known David Paterson for over 20 years. I've had a great working relationship with him and I think he will turn out to be one of the great governors the office ever had."

He noted that Paterson recently traveled to Israel, "was supportive when we proposed laws that affected kashrusand has been close to the Jewish community."

Justice Joseph Fisch of State Supreme Court in the Bronx was equally effusive. "There is no doubt in my mind that he's going to be good for the Jewish community because he's got a yiddishe heart."

Fisch first met Paterson in 1982 in the Queens DA's office where they worked together. Fisch later attended Paterson's wedding and Paterson "danced the hora" at the wedding of Fisch's daughter.

"He's just the definition of a mentch," said Fisch. In 2007, the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education - of which Fisch is honorary president - granted Paterson its Man of the Year award.

Paterson was sworn in Monday after Eliot Spitzer's resignation took effect in the wake of revelations of Spitzer's involvement with a prostitution ring.

Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz, vice president for community services of Agudath Israel, delivered an invocation at the ceremony.

Paterson is New York's first black governor and stands to become the nation's first legally blind governor to serve more than eleven days (which is how long Bob Cowley Riley acted as governor of Arkansas in 1975).

L-R: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Sen. Hillary Clinton, Gov. David Paterson, former Manhattan borough president C. Virginia Fields, Assemblyman Dov Hikind.

A graduate of Columbia University and Hofstra Law School, Paterson was elected to the New York State Senate in 1985, becoming its youngest member at age 31. He represented Harlem and the Upper West Side, the same areas his father, Basil Paterson, had represented in the 1960's. (Basil Paterson was New York's first black secretary of state.)

In 2003, Paterson became New York's first black Senate minority leader and in January 2007, with the election of Eliot Spitzer as governor, Paterson became the state's first black lieutenant governor.

In talking about Paterson, at least one politician drew a comparison to his predecessor.

"He has a good sense about him, he has a good wit, he's an individual who you enjoy being around. And that is obviously a much different tone than the intense Eliot Spitzer," said Senator Martin Golden. The Brooklyn Republican did note, however, that Paterson is liberal "with a capital 'L' " in his political views.

Yet when asked about an issue like school vouchers, which Orthodox Jews often champion but which liberal politicians generally oppose, Assemblyman Dov Hikind said, "Let me put it to you this way, you know how far we've gotten on that topic all of these years - not very far. We had a republican governor for 12 years, we didn't get anywhere before that with Mario Cuomo, and we weren't going anywhere with Eliot Spitzer."

On the other hand, he said, "David Paterson is the kind of guy who [by working with me and others will] find additional ways to be helpful to private and parochial schools. He loves the Jewish community. I wouldn't say that about most people. I consider David Paterson one of my closest friends in Albany for a long, long time."

When Hikind initiated a Jewish-black alliance in January, Paterson signed on. Ten years ago, Hikind related, he and Paterson brought several dozen black and Jewish high-school age boys to a kosher pizza shop for an afternoon of pizza and dialogue.

"I just think he's a wonderful human being," said City Councilman David Weprin, who gave Paterson an "A+" rating. Weprin has known Paterson ever since they entered law school together 30 years ago, he said, and were part of the same study group. Due to Paterson's blindness, Weprin used to read law texts to him aloud.

"He has a brilliant mind. He would comprehend the stuff right away," Weprin recalled. "He actually comprehended it better than I did having read it to him. I'd go back to him to help me digest what he had learned from my reading."

Judge Fisch remembers being impressed with Paterson from his days at the Queens DA's office. "When Basil [Paterson] would call, he'd say 'How's David doing?' and I'd say, 'Basil, David is doing very well, not as Basil Paterson's son, but on his own.' And then I said - this is in 1982 - 'Basil, there will come a time when people will ask you, Oh, are you David Paterson's father?' "

With Monday's inauguration, that time has arrived.

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