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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Lown Award Recipient Berman Proposes
Increased Communal Education Tasks
Special to
- The Jewish News
BOSTON, Mass. — Ac-
cepting the Philip Lown
Distinguished Service
Award, Sunday, from Bos-
ton Hebrew College, Man-
dell Berman, Detroit com-
munity leader, described
( the dire needs for increased
devotion to educational
ri.-- eds and proposed a pro-
' gram of action to assure
Cow - 'nal concern and to
ma', ae home responsible
or die major obligations in
schooling the children.
MANDELL BERMAN
1
1
Painting a gloomy picture
of existing conditions, Be-
-7-man made this reference to
the situation in Detroit:
"In Detroit we recently
discovered that of the 1,800
-Jr so summer campers in
our own Federation camp,
more than 600, more than a
third, were registered in no
Hebrew school program of
any kind. I think it is clear
that Jewish education in its
present form does not evoke
the support of the majority
pf Jewish parents."
He described the situa-
tion as it affects American
Jewry by indicating:
"According to avail-
able estimates the num-
bers of students enrolled
in any kind of Jewish
chools in the early '60s
totaled about 600,000 and
Currently that total has
shrunk to 360,000. That's
drop of 42 percent in
less than 20 years. Hap-
ily, 25 percent of the re-
mainder are in intensive
ay schools, but regrett-
ably, one third of this di-
minished number are still
in non-intensive one-day
Sunday schools which
even
e n according
acccoar d ri s n a r to w Roee
educators
y inadequate.
"The balance are in con-
-negational afternoon
schillimostly under Con-
e and Reform au-
spices."
-In his proposal Berman
suggests a course of action
involving "contemporiza-
tion, coordination, concen-
"0 • ,,
tration.
First contemporization —
we must contemporize what
we teach. If it's too late to
reach the parents, perhaps
we can retain the children
by teaching them more than
we now do about what holds
their parent's interest — an
understanding of how com-
\munities work as they do
and something of the histor-
ical process that has shaped
-::heir development .. .
"Second, coordination
1 -
-
L 1 f• I .
— along with most pro-
fessional educators I feel
we must rethink our con-
ventional ideas of formal
classroom education and
we must expand it to in-
formal areas to include
larger segments of
Jewish communal life —
to summer camping — Is-
rael summer tours —
young adult programm-
ing, and, of course, we
must reach out to the
Jewish home —
the Jewish family. There-
fore, if we are to forge
links between formal
and informal education
we need a strong central
agency to help us do the
job — one that has the
confidence and the mean-
ingful financial support
of our communities and
of the denominational in-
stitutions which are
associated with our con-
gregational schools. In
order to make effective
use of our Jewish educa-
tional establishments the
national umbrella
agency has to be linked to
the totality of education
on which our total
Jewish community is
spending communal dol-
lars...
"And insofar as outreach
to the Jewish family is con-
cerned, a groundswell of
interest has begun to de-
velop, but whose province is
this work in our own com-
munities? The family serv-
ices see the family from
their social perspective, the
Jewish centers see the
Jewish family from their
traditional center perspec-
tive, but what we need is a
community by community
decision that the Jewish
family is the whole commu-
nity's province. People must
be trained, professionals
with Jewish backgrounds,
to work on an inter-agency
basis with the family. In es-
sence, we need to educate
our professionals Jewishly
to understand and meet the
real Jewish need of our
Jewish families. And who
can coordinate and help
provide the curriculum for
such training except a na-
tional Jewish educational
agency? .. .
"Finally, the third area,
concentration. It's time
today — now! — for the
leadership of the American
Jewish community to rec-
ognize that Jewish survival
is at stake. How Jewish
leadership prioritizes its re-
sources and its energies in
the next five years will pro-
vide the vital difference. If
we can spend $40 to $50 mil-
lion in the next year in this
country alone to resettle
Russian Jews — and, of
course, we must — can't we
spend at least $2 million
nationwide to build a strong
central educational agency?
If we can find able leader-
ship — senior leadership —
for our Jewish hospitals, our
Jewish centers, our capital
funds committees and for
Kadar Hollywood Successes
Recalled on Director's Death
By HERBERT G. LUFT
(Copyright 1979, JTA, Inc.)
HOLLYWOOD — Jan
Kadar, the Hungarian-born
Jewish film director who
died June 1, age 61, is best
known to the American
public for his monumental
motion picture, "The Shop
on Main Street," a humanly
warm document dealing
with the plight of an elderly
woman (portrayed by Yid-
dish actress Ida Kaminska),
who is about to be deported
by the Nazis and their
Slovak collaborators during
World War II.
The Czech-made film won
an Academy Award in 1965
for Kadar (together with his
co-director Elmar Klos) and
an additional "Oscar"
nomination for Ms.
Kaminska. It also won Ita-
ly's David di Donatelli
Award and it gained Kadar
world recognition as a film
maker.
Kadar also filmed "Lies
My Father Told Me," for
which he won the Golden
Globe Award and an Oscar
nomination.
Rob Houwer, the noted
Dutch film producer was
in Hollywood to show us
his stirring anti-Nazi
epic, "Soldier of Orange,"
which had its American
premiere at the Seattle
Film Festival, but has not
yet opened in New York.
The picture is based on
the true-life adventures
of Holland's most hon-
ored resistance fighter
and war hero, who
engaged in clandestine
operations before joining
the RAF as a bomber
pilot.
James Caan was on the
dais at the June 5 Israel In-
dependence Day Bond
luncheon at the Beverly
Hilton Hotel to address the
audience as a Jew and
American.
Friday, June 22, 1979 37
Index Down
our prestigious national
boards, can't we devote our-
selves in a plainful and de-
liberate fashion to recruit
effective and respected
leadership — for a national
central agency for Jewish
education, and for our own
local bureaus and federa-
tion committees of educa-
tion? Can't we look out at
the world around us and
agree that to Judaize our
community institutions we
must insist upon Jewish
training programs for the
professionals who run them
and for our lay leaders as
well?
"If ever there was a time
for speaking out — for say-
ing that we are in a battle
for Jewish survival — that
Israel by itself, that Jewish
activism by itself, and
Jewish philanthropy by it-
self, cannot solve — and if
there ever was a time that
we demand that our com-
munity leadership face this
reality — that time is now!"
Dr. Eli Grad, former edu-
cational director of Cong.
Shaarey Zedek in Detroit, is
president of Boston Hebrew
College.
Lights! Action!
JERUSALEM (JTA) —
The Central Bureau of
Statistics has announced a
4.8 percent rise in the con-
sumer price index for the
month of May, a considera-
ble drop from the 8.7 per-
cent increase in April.
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