If You Seek a Good Community Look About You
By SAMUEL H. RUBINER
An Analysis of Our Community's Achievements
Recently I returned from a trip to the miracle that is Israel, and, for
many weeks, I could talk of nothing but the wonders we of Detroit are
helping to accomplish in the Jewish State. But, increasingly, I have re-
called the questions asked me by a communal leader I met in Paris, who
asked me to tell him of the structure of our local Jewish community,
just as my friends here at home have ques-
tioned me about Israel. Looking at our lo-
cal agencies, institutions and services
through the eyes of a Jew from abroad, I
realized that we are not keeping the picture
in focus when we concentrate only on the
dramatic achievements our Allied Jewish
Campaign funds participate in overseas. We
have built a good, a thoughtful, a visionary
community here in Detroit and, as we be-
in a new year, it is time, I think, that we
take stock of our social services, in the way
I described them to the Jewish leader in
France. --
•
Beginning with the Jewish Welfare Fed-
eration which is—more than the sum of its
fund-raising, social planning and educational
parts—the guiding spirit that watches over
the organic growth of this community, we
marvel at the intricate yet efficient organi-
SAMUEL H. RUBINER
zation we have developed out of our com-
munal experience. Thousands of volunteer workers from all walks of life
have constantly to be brought together, year after year, to see through
the many phases of our community job. It takes about 5,000 volunteers
just for our Allied Jewish Campaign and these men, women and young
adults sacrifice much of their time and energy for the sucess of our pri-
mary drive---typifying an ever-widening sense • of responsibility in the
common destiny of our Jeivish community.
•
Besides the campaigners, there are volunteers at work in the budget
and planning divisions, our agency boards, the many vital committees
and subcommittees who contribute the devotion, labor and generosity
so necessary to the successful operation of a complex. community.
The fruits of our volunteer labors are concretely illustrated in. the
forward movement of the Jewish community, not only physically, but
culturally. Symbolic, perhaps, of the greater concentration in communal
affairs is the Fred M. Butzel Memorial Building—selected to perpetuate
the name of the greatest Jewish leader Detroit has known—at Madison
and John R, to be occupied at the end of this year by the Federation
and many of its agencies.
President, Jewish Welfare
Federation of Detroit
Traveling uptown from the new building, we pass buildings that in
the past were part of the wealth of the Jewish community. They are silent
witnesses to the changes just a few generations have made. We hope that
the careful planning we are now doing will insure that our present build-
ings, and the new ones we acquire, will have an even longer useful life
than did the previous homes of our institutions. The new Jewish hospital—
Sinai Hospital—for example, is being constructed on a site that our archi-
tects tell us should be ample to meet both our present health needs and
those not now foreseeable.
Sinai Hospital is a source of pride for all of us especially because it
will be one of the , greatest contributions by the Jews of Detroit to the
progress of our general community. Sinai will be a new link in the chain
of medical research; it will be a monument to brotherhood in action, as
it brings the finest in health care to people of all races and creeds.
Another way we plan and work for the future is in the education of
our youth, through the many branches of the United Hebrew Schools, lo-
. cated so that children of every Jewish neighborhood may have facilities
for a Jewish education, and through the other Jewish schools, which re-
ceive subventions from our ,Campaign. Informally, the Jewish Community
Center, in its three fine buildings, and Fresh. Air Camp, during the sum-
mer, provide happy Jewish associations and experiences for our boys and
girls, giving them pleasant memories of activities shared in a Jewish group.
We hope that we shall soon be able to expand this important field of work,
and have taken a big step in that direction with the purchase of the mag-
nificent 600-acre Tamarack camp site, adequate for summer camping for
all groups in the community who can benefit from such a program. We
have purchased Tamarack, with allocations out of five years of Allied
Jewish Campaign funds—a seemingly small grant when compared with
the many other jobs we do, but a wonderful accomplishment in its result.
No matter how detailed I try to make this report to our "stockhold-
ers," for that is how we should define every contributor to the Allied
Jewish Campaign, I cannot give more than an inkling of the panorama
of Jewish life in Detroit. Family welfare, care of the aged, vocational
service, ,recreation for adults, for young people, for Jewish servicemen—
all this, and more, make up our Federation responsibilities. But sketchy
though this inventory may be, it is some evidence of what emerges from
the harmonious, practical and imaginative working-together of our vol-
unteer boards and committees. As individuals, they have special interests,
but, in the group, they put aside ideological differences to make the best
decisions within their power for the greater good of the total community.
They are the strength of our good community; they, we, you.
,
Federation —A Network of Good Deeds'
By ISIDORE SOBELOFF
Executive Director, Jewish Welfare
Federation of Detroit
Some times, it seems, the institutions closest
to our daily lives are the most difficult to define
in simple terms, and so it is with the Jewish Wel-
fare Federation, whose services affect the status
of Jews everywhere, of every age, and of. every
group.
• What is Federation? Legal language tells
-- us that it is . . . a voluntary association of non-
profit organizations and of individuals inter-
ested in meeting Jewish social health and wel-
fare, educational, recreational and group se-
curity needs, and other needs of general con-
cern to the Jewish community of metropolitan
Detroit.
But what is Federation—really? To the elder-
ly man at the Jewish Home for Aged, it is the
comfort of his declining years: To
the bewildered teen-ager, it is the
Jewish Vocational Service, a guid-
ing hand in the selection of voca-
tion or college. To the Jew of Iran,
rescued by Allied Jewish Cam-
paign funds, it is, life itself.
Federation is many things: it is
the thousands of volunteer work-
ers who make its fund-raising, its
budgeting, its social planning pro-
Sobeloff
gram possible, who are the back-
bone of Federation's functional member agencies.
Federation is the competence, integrity and
capability of its professional staff members, ex-
ecutive and clerical, who give interest and devo-
tion beyond the measure of a salary check.
Federation is the family which receives coun-
seling from the Jewish Social Service Bureau, the
adolescent meeting with his friends at the Jew-
ish Community Center, the refugee given medi-
cal care at North End Clinic, the child learning
the cultural heritage of his fathers at the United
Hebrew Schools.
Federation is the network of fine services the
Jews of Detroit have created for themselves, to
serve themselves, to help one another, and to
send help to other Jews—here at home, through-
out the United States, all over the world—where-
,
ever Jewish needs exist.
Jewish Genius
Einstein's Story as
A Citizen of U. S.
His name a trademark in the sci-
entific world, Prof. Albert Einstein
lives quietly in a modest home off
the campus of Princeton Univer-
sity in Princeton, N. J. The Jewish
genius was a tired but happy man
when, with the advent of Nazi
Germany, the United States opened
its doors to Welcome him (1). With
in the classroom of the university
Dr. Einstein, chalk in hand, illus-
trates one of his famous theories.
(2). The contrast between the Ein-
stein of today, and almost two
decades ago when he first came to
the free shores of America is clear-
ly noticeable as the eminent scien-
tist, pipe in hand, relaxes at home.
(3). The world famous scientist's
home portrays the rich conserva-
tive quality of Einstein himself. (4)
A section of the scholar1 large pri-
vate library where he works late
into the night in quest of research
material to bolster theories yet to
come (5).
10—THE JEWISH NEWS
Friday, September 28, 1951