12 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS - Friday, June 8, 1919 Federal Appeals Court Will Rule on Yule in Schools LENNY LIEBERMAN By BEN GALLOB NEW YORK (JTA) — An American Jewish Congress attorney said last week that a Federal Appeals Court test of the constitutionality of Christmas observance guidelines for a public Orchestra 559.0844 Quality Music Disco Dance Instruction Floor Show (audience participation) • ALL IN ONE First Time Ever DA NS INTERNATIONAL DESIGNS LTD tableware, stainless, pots and pans, and stemware. Complete Table Settings By JOSEPH POLAKOFF For example: Reg.$32.95 4-piece place setting$2110 in Sugar or Spice pattern OPEN MON-SAT 9:30-5:00 Louis court of the case was based on concern that adherence to standard court procedures might bring a ruling too late to affect ap- plication of the guidelines for the coming Yule season. The AJCongress brief was prepared by Stern and Nathan Z. Dershowitz, di- rector of the agency's com- mission on law and social action. The brief declared that religious holiday obser- vance in the public schools violated the First Amendment's church- state separation guaran- tee, as well as hurting Jewish children in such schools. The case, "Florey vs. Sioux Falls School District," deals with guidelines adopted by the Sioux Falls, S.D. school board for the pub- lic schools under its jurisdiction. A joint friend of the court brief also has been filed with the St. Louis appeals court by the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA) and the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith. Mar- tin Cowan, COLPA secre- tary, and Richard Weiss of the ADL wrote the brief. It pointed out that the Sioux Falls school board rules provide not only for Christ- mas and Easter pageants in the public schools but for the display of religious Egypt Project Renewal Needed for Cairo's Huge City of Dead Selected groups and stock items in most popular patterns. Reg. $29.95 Thistle stainless 5-piece place setting school district, an obser- vance which the AJCon- gress told the court hurts Jewish children, appeared to be the firsttime the issue had reached the Federal Appeals Court level. Marc Stern, AJCongress counsel, who helped write a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Eighth Cir- cuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, said the agency hoped the regional counsel for the American. Civil Liberties Union, Steven Pevar, counsel for the plain- tiffs, would file a request with the St. Louis court to expedite its hearings on the case. Stern said the hope for an expedited hearing by the St. 1915 The Gold Place mgrile PLACE North Park Plaza, Room 120, 17117 W. Nine Mile Road Southfield, Michigan 48075 (313) 559-6140 Policy: NEVER a DUE BILL . . . ALWAYS a CASH REFUND (Editor's note: Joseph Polakoff was one of the correspondents accom- panying President Car- ter in his historic peace mission to Egypt and Is- rael last March. What fol- lows is an exclusive re- port based on Polakoff's visit to Cairo.) CAIRO (JTA) — On the southernmost outskirts of Cairo, where sprawling urban slums mixed with middle-class apartment buildings meet the desert in Seniors, Are You Living Alone and NOT Liking It? Or; Living With Your Children and Feel Like You're. In The Way? Perhaps You Should Consider.. . An Adult Community Located at 28301 Franklin Road, Southfield, Michigan Among the Many Services We Offer.. . • Breakfast and Dinner • Apartment Cleaning • Attendants on Duty 24 hrs. Daily • All Utilities • Linen Service • Chauffeur Service... • Ongoing Activities an of course Companionship! Come to Our OPEN HOUSE EVERY SUNDAY from 1:00 to 4:00 PM. . And See For Yourself Call 353-2810 for details the area known as Basan- tine, is "The City of the Dead." It represents at once the poverty of Egyptian masses and, in part, the animosity towards Jews in the generations of warfare and hate that followed _the rebirth of Israel. The "city" spreads over a series of Moslem, Christian and Jewish burial grounds in Basantine but the "most dilapidated," according to an official U.S. report, is the Jewish cemetery with its uncounted thousands of graves — above ground in mausoleums and sar- cophagi and below ground in family plots and indi- vidual sites. In the Jewish cemetery, as in the others, the "city" population consists of families of squatters who live with their livestock — donkeys, goats, dogs and chickens — in vandalized mausoleums and among toppled and demolished tombstones. Where once Jewish Egyptians were laid to rest, excreta and garbage foul the atmosphere and de- spoil graves. Yet, curiously, some imposing sarcophagi and 'gravestones remain undamaged in those unwal- led, unfenced burial grounds. Without electricity, sanitation, privacy or adequate water, human beings try to survive in those areas set aside for the dead. The U.S. report says that perhaps a quar- ter of a million people have moved into this nec- ropolis and its environs as a result of Cairo's acute housing shortage. In the Jewish cemetery the stench of waterless, sewerless people and their livestock is literally overpowering. During President Car- ter's peace-making mission to Egypt in March, this re- porter visited Basantine with Clifford Evans, the RKO General Broadcast- ing's White- House corre- spondent. The night before, in downtown Cairo at the beautiful, 80-year-old Shar Shamayim Synagogue with its pathetically tiny congre- gation, the JTA reporter was cautioned. "Don't go to Basantine alone," a woman advised. "It's dangerous. You are a foreigner and well-dressed. Be careful." However, with the taxi that brought the two re- porters to the cemetery never far from them, the visit passed with no sign of possible crime or violence. In the current period of developing official friendliness between Is- rael and Egypt, it was suggested that a mark of binational cooperation could be the restoration, as a joint venture, of the Jewish cemetery. While other needs in Egypt hold much higher priorities, a symbol of the "new" Middle East could be the eradication of "The City of the Dead," resettlement of squatters in decent dwellings, and the restora- tion of the cemetery to the honor of both countries and peoples. symbols, such as the cross and nativity creches in the classrooms. Others joining in the brief are Agudath Israel of America, the National Council of Young Israel, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congrega- tions of America, according to COLPA and the ADL. The guidelines were' , challenged in 1978 by a group of students, par- ents and taxpayers, who sought to enjoin their promulgation on grounds they were in conflict with the First Amendment. The local district court upheld the school board and the case was appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief argued that the guidelines were unconstitu- tional because, first, they have a religious purpose; second, they have the direct effect of advancing religion; and third, they excessively entangle the government in religion. Stern said this is the three-part test used by the Supreme Court in such cases. ORT is now serving 88,000 students in 27 coun- tries. 7th gttctdetts obVist, COW, ter oe cornet DISCO CLASSES FALL 1979 ____ 1967-3232 TamaRoFF Your Sign of Value For ... BUICK • OPEL • HONDA Sales & Service For . CUSTOM LEASING Tamaroff Leasing Inc. For ... MOTOR HOME & R.V. SALES Tamaroff Motor Home Center For .. • MOTOR HOME & RN. SERVICE Tamaroff Motor Home Service Center 23820 Telegraph Road Between Nine & Ten Mile Rds., Southfield, Mich. TaMaROFF Buick rOpel Honda 28585 Telegraph Rd. across from Tel-Twelve Mall Southfield, Mich. Phone 353-1300