Martin Sokol’s ad hominem attack on me is typical of most right-wing blowhards: He uses innuendo, ignores the facts and changes the subject. He knows nothing of the issues I wrote about in describing the Great Neck mayor’s deficiencies. I have attended dozens of meetings of the village, zoning and planning boards for more than 15 years. I don’t believe he has ever been in Village Hall.
We are not acquainted.
Moreover, given his contributions of $3,450 since 2004 to Republican candidates such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Scott Brown and Paul Ryan as well as to the Republican National Committee, plus an additional $500 to his sanctimonious Orthodox friend Joe Lieberman, I presume he and the mayor are waiting for their invitation to the White House!
Library patrons and taxpayers might also recall the highlight of his presidency of that institution was his spending on lavish executive tables and chairs for the Library Board’s exclusive use. The public be damned.
Sokol’s attitude is typical of what this community has become. I fear the worst.
—David Zielenziger
To the editor:
I am a member of Great Neck Synagogue and one of many members in that Modern Orthodox institution who voted for Hillary and twice for Barack Obama for president and agonize over the state of our country at this time. I am replying to David Zielinzeiger’s blatantly ad hominem attack on my friend Martin Sokol, who along with his entire extended family I consider close personal friends.
I do not know Mr. Zielinzeiger either but I know the entire Sokol family to be fixtures of the Great Neck Community for three generations, and counting. All of them possess unquestioned integrity and have spent hours in selfless service to this community. There was nothing personal in Mr. Sokol’s reply to Mr. Zielinzeiger’s unabashedly prejudiced remarks, filled with generalities that enemies of the Jews have used for generations and genocidal purposes.
I wonder whether Mr. Zielinzeiger has ever bothered to attend the Great Neck Rabbis dialogue, which includes four of the most prominent and diverse rabbis in Great Neck. All of them, without exception, would consider Mr. Zielinzeiger’s characterization of Great Neck as the next Kiryat Joel as offensive. Asians, Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews as well as Irish and Italians and Hispanics and African Americans, are all living side-by-side and swimming together at Parkwood Pool this summer. The integrated nature of the community provides incontrovertible evidence that the Village of Great Neck is not the next Kiryat Joel or Five Towns and never can be.
How can Mr. Zielinzeiger be so sanctimonious in his two letters and implicitly deny his apparent Jewish anti-Semitism? Lastly, I agree with the words of Mr. Sokol that “whatever their level of observance: when one Jew is attacked for being a Jew, all Jews are being attacked.” In this tense, politically divided community, and country, the last thing we need is to feed the perceptions of Jews in the eyes of hate groups.
Lastly, in reply to the further inflammatory letter from Ms. Rosenthal in the latest Great Neck Record, I ask why did the driver of the car whose passage was momentarily blocked not honk at the men walking side-by-side in the middle of a busy thoroughfare? That would be the appropriate action in the circumstances, not attributing some sinister political and/or religious motive for how they were celebrating the Sabbath.
Fred Pomerantz