| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017123)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017123" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3475 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 4.2.12 |
| WC: 191694 |
| SAT scores, there would be little diversity," he explained. He too apparently believed in the |
| "Yiddisher (and Asian) Kup" theory.) |
| I did not come close to having an 82 average, but fortunately there was also a test that an |
| applicant with non-qualifying grades could take. Unfortunately, a high score alone on the test did |
| not get you in: you needed a combined score test plus grade average—to make the cut. With |
| my low average, I needed a near perfect score to make it. Otherwise I would have to go to night |
| school and work during the day. I did very well on the test and was admitted. |
| I also won a New York State Regents Scholarship which paid me $1,400 to go to college. (I put |
| the money in an interest bearing account that paid for my first year at law school.) The state |
| scholarship was based entirely on a single, highly competitive exam. High schools took great |
| pride in how many state scholarships their students won. The relevant statistic that helped rank |
| the schools was the percentage of those who won, based on the number of students who took the |
| exam. My high school was obsessed with doing well in the state scholarship competition, so it |
| limited those who could take the exam to students with grade points over 80, in order to inflate |
| the percentage of winners. I did not qualify, but I knew I could do well on a state-wide |
| competitive exam that was graded by outsiders, not by my teachers who were predisposed against |
| me. So I pleaded with Rabbi Zuroff to take the exam. He refused, telling me I would never win |
| and my taking it would just bring down the percentage. Not satisfied with his answer, I filed a |
| petition with the New York Regents- my first of many petitions. To everyone's surprise, the |
| Regents ruled in my favor and the school was ordered to let me, and everyone else, take the |
| exam. Two of us, who had averages below 80, along with 4 or 5 others, won the scholarship. |
| My principal's first reaction was that I must have cheated, but a check of the seating chart showed |
| that I was not sitting near anyone else who won. So off I went to Brooklyn College, with money |
| in my bank account. It was a turning point for me academically, professionally, religiously and |
| existentially. |
| Before I turn to my college and law school years, which were quite successful, I want to speculate |
| for a moment as to why, despite the unsuccessful nature of my early teen years, I am so focused |
| on them as so formative to my later life. Several years ago, The New York Times Magazine asked |
| me to reflect back on my teen years for a column entitled About Men. The assignment got me to |
| wonder why I am so obsessed with nostalgia from that particular period in my life. This is part of |
| what I wrote: |
| I'M ENTERING THAT AGE WHEN songs from the hit parades of my adolescence bring |
| tears of nostalgia. I'm a sucker for memorabilia of the 1950's. |
| My house is cluttered with toys I've recently bought - chintzy replicas of vintage Chevys |
| and Thunderbirds, overpriced miniature jukeboxes that play "Rock Around the Clock," |
| anything reminiscent of the 1955 world champion Brooklyn Dodgers (a redundancy to any |
| aficionado, because there are no other world champion Brooklyn Dodgers). |
| I rush to see any Woody Allen film that has even a remote connection to the time and |
| place we both grew up in (another redundancy - everything Woody Allen does has a |
| strong connection to Brooklyn in the 50's). I drag my family to Neil Simon plays through |
| 36 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017123 |
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