David Zielenziger should never be elected trustee of the Great Neck Library. In these very pages he has espoused alarmingly bigoted and discordant opinions. He has written that if an Orthodox Jew is elected mayor of the Village of Great Neck, “The village will ultimately become the Long Island equivalent of Kiryas Joel [a village within the town of Monroe in Orange County, NY, where the majority of its residents are Yiddish-speaking Hasidic Jews].” In case his meaning wasn’t clear, he added for emphasis that “[we] need a secular majority to assure our future, before it’s too late.”
A man who evidently sees the world in this dark, tormented way—us versus them—and is willing to express these views in our community newspaper, is not fit to lead the cultural and educational jewel that is the Great Neck Library. We do not want divisiveness and hatred to infect, even subtly or unconsciously, library operations or programming. The library should remain a protected “third place” oasis for all of us and our children.
I’ll vote for Chelsea Sassouni.
—Adam Cohen