Sinatra is truly my man

When Sinatra died in the late 90s I went into heavy Sinatra mode. He is the song-man for any true-blue American male (and all that). Just now, reading the obit for Teddy Kollek by Martin Peretz, I see this:

[Kollek] was also a smuggler, a smuggler of weapons during the state's gestation period and directly afterwards. He was the Jewish defense army's man in New York, the representative of the Haganah, headquartered in Hotel 14 on East 60th Street where the Copacabana was housed. I don't know whether it is there that Teddy met Frank Sinatra. But, someplace, he (and Frank's lawyer Mickey Rudin, but that's another story I'll tell you sometime) lured Sinatra into the illegal gun running racket to Palestine and then to Israel.

Italian mafiosi, bound to the longshoremen in Hoboken, ran the contraband. The FBI was tapping everyone's phones. So Sinatra became their ongoing live cross-Hudson contact to shun the feds. He was a faithful friend of Zion till the end. Many years later, I presided at a Jerusalem Foundation dinner at which Sinatra was presented with a medal for his dangerous work. After all, he could have gone to jail. We gave him a renaissance map with the four spheres of the earth converging with Jerusalem at the apex, the center of the world. Here's what the presentation said, "From Jerusalem, city of David, sweet singer of Israel. To Frank Sinatra, sweet singer of America."

That's all I need, baby. He's mine forever. I am truly proud that Joseph was born to his music - because, in addition to being cool, its now frum.

Backpost finished on 5/1/08, 12:51 AM