The words chosen by Ed Koch to mark his final resting place are a quote from murdered journalist Daniel Pearl: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”
The line was Pearl’s last words in 2002, just before The Wall Street Journal reporter was killed on camera by terrorists.
Koch also wanted his Jewish identity to be a central and lasting part of his legacy.
“On my tombstone, which awaits me at the Trinity Church nondenominational cemetery at 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, I had inscribed the last words of Daniel Pearl — uttered at his publicly viewed murder — which were, ‘My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish,’” Koch wrote in a 2011 column for The Huffington Post.
“I believe those words should be part of the annual services on the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur, and should be repeated by the congregants,” he added.
Pearl’s quote is followed on Koch’s tombstone by the Jewish prayer: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Koch died early Friday from congestive heart failure at the age of 88.