Editor, The Press:
(re: “Wrong, absolutely wrong,” Nov. 18)
During my tenure as editor of this newspaper — and as a private citizen since — I have often disagreed with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz.
Today, though, I am proud that Riverdale has a representative who will not bend an inch to the anti-Semitic hooligans who have besieged his office.
When The Riverdale Press was firebombed in 1989, death threats followed.
When I listened to the venomous phone call to the Assemblyman that Mr. Dinowitz made public on social media, I was reminded in particular of one that began, “Stein boys are Jew boys,” and went on to describe as graphically as possible the way in which the writer planned to kill my brother and me.
At that moment — and not for the first time — Press editorials were excoriating Mr. Dinowitz’s Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club. But as I stood in front of our gutted building on that terrible morning, club officials offered me the keys to their office and the use of their computers.
Other community leaders who disliked our coverage or our opinions also leaped to the paper’s defense.
That’s the best of Riverdale, and it’s heartening to see the pattern repeated this week. I’m with the many, many Riverdalians who have responded to hatred by standing in solidarity with its would-be victims.
Bernard Stein
The author is publisher emeritus of The Riverdale Press