Judge Moses Weinstein remembered

Moses Weinstein no longer sits on the bench, but his presence is still felt in the borough’s courts.
On Tuesday, July 22, eight months after his death, about 50 members of the Queens judiciary gathered in the lobby of the Queens Supreme Courthouse in Jamaica to commemorate the deeds of this larger-than-life New Yorker.
The ceremony - a dedication of a plaque in his memory - was brief. “My father liked brevity,” explained Jeremy Weinstein, administrative judge at the Queens Supreme Courthouse.
“This is a modest but wonderful tribute to a man. He loved people and he always wanted to help somebody get somewhere,” Weinstein added.
Steve Orlow, president of the Queens County Bar Association, attested to that. “Every time I met Judge Weinstein he took me aside and he always gave me some kind of direction.”
Weinstein taught others that no matter how high up you go, you should acknowledge others, Orlow explained.
Weinstein died at the age of 95. He spent most of his career holding powerful political posts such as serving in the State Assembly as a Queens Democrat and chairing the Queens Democratic Party.
As a politician, he established a consumer bill of rights and reformed divorce and welfare laws, among other things.
In the 1970s, Weinstein served as a State Supreme Court justice in Queens, an administrative judge and a trial jurist. In 1980, he was appointed to the Appellate Division where he served for eight years.
One of the things Weinstein is famous for is a 1973 case when he set free a woman who had a three-year-term due to selling drugs; his explanation was that she had cancer and less than a year to live.
Weinstein grew up in poverty on the Lower East Side and fought in World War II.