Experiment suggested for Roosevelt resident

Dear Ms. [Danielle] Petrics, I read your letter to the editor [in the Sept. 21 edition of the Examiner] with dismay. It is contemptible of you to compare Roosevelt with Nazi Germany. You, like other supporters of the yeshiva, continue to define the conflict between the Congregation Anshei Roosevelt/Yeshiva Me'on Hatorah and the Roosevelt community as a religious issue rather than a zoning and quality-of-life issue.

Let me suggest an experiment to you: Step out of your house and look to your left and to your right. Imagine, if you can, that a nonlocal private school has bought the properties surrounding your home and it intends to build classrooms, dormitories, faculty housing, etc., for a school of 150 to 300 adolescent boys, that will operate 15 hours per day for seven days a week. These boys will have no other recreation space except the lot next door to you. Consider further that none of these boys will have ever been your neighbor, but will have been recruited from any community in the country except Roosevelt. Under the conditions just described would you encourage the community to permit such an institution?

If you can honestly answer yes to that question, then I will join you in lobbying the Planning Board and the Borough Council to rezone the properties adjoining your home for use by the yeshiva or any other private school. If, on the other hand, you are not prepared to press for that rezoning, then I suggest that you and other yeshiva supporters stop trying to force this community-destroying development into somebody else's backyard.

Bert Ellentuck

Roosevelt