Kadish: “Very patriotic and caring”
NJJN Middlesex bureau chief Debra Rubin interviews Ben-Ami Kadish’s cantor and friends:
Cantor Eli Perlman, religious leader of the Jewish Congregation of Concordia, said he did not know congregant Ben-Ami Kadish well, but was concerned about his age and health.
“I’ve only been in meetings with him, but I don’t think he’s in any shape to sit through a trial,” he said of the 84-year-old Kadish. “He doesn’t look like somebody who gets around easily.”
Perlman questioned why the government was bringing charges against Kadish decades after the alleged incidents.
“It sounds like a red herring-there’s something else going on,” he added. “It doesn’t make sense after all these years. Why has this all of a sudden come to the front?”
Charles and Fran Koppelman, who live in Concordia– another of Monroe’s adult communities — have known both Doris and Ben-Ami Kadish for several years.
“He’s outstanding as far as I’m concerned; very patriotic and caring,” said Charles Koppelman. “I know him as an outstanding individual as is his wife. I don’t know what he’s done before because I can’t see into the past. But, I can only praise him.”
Fran Koppelman, who described both Doris and Ben-Ami as “such nice people,” said she sees them around town.
“We just wish everything turns out well,” she said. “At his age he could drop dead from the humiliation.”
JustASC is written by Andrew Silow-Carroll, Editor-in-Chief of the 