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Averting The Severe Decree 3
Max Kampelman: A Man With A Mission 33
'Tam O'Shanter Shows Some Fashion Flash For Fall 44
Lew Matlin Knows the ; Tigers' Score 88
E JEWISH NEWS
SERVING DETROIT'S METROPOLITAN JEWISH COMMUNITY
THIS ISSUE 50c
SEPTEMBER 20, 1985
Blue-Ribbon Study:
Local Jewish Identity
. Federation unit could
change the focus of
Detroit's Jewish agencies
BY ALAN HITSKY
News Editor
Divorce ...
suddenly single ...
three of your five
children with no
feelings or affilia-
tion with their
Judiasm, and a
fourth child only
ltikewarm
Assimilation is
Joel Tauber
a major problem for the Jewish
• , community, but seldom has it been
brought closer to home than when
Jewish Welfare Federation President
Joel Tauber stood before several
hundred people last week and de-
, scribed his own situation and that of
his five children. He riveted the at-
,• \' tention of Federation's annul meet-
ing on the establishment of a
community-wide, 45-member com-
mission on Jewish identity and af-
filiation, the first of its kind in the
country.
The charge of the commission is:
"to identify and assess challenges
posed to the organized Jewish com-
munity of Detroit by social, cultural,
and demographic changes affecting
patterns of identity and affiliation;
to identify those ways and means in
which Federation and its agencies
Hebron:
Business
As Usual
Page 2;
might significantly respond • to the
issues posed, and ways in which
Federation and its agencies might
work with other organizations in the
community to respond s to these
needs."
"When I was growing up,"
Tauber told the audience at the
Jewish Community Center, "it was
in the Dexter and Davison
neighborhood. Everyone was Jewish
there. My synagogue, the cheder, the
Jewish Community Center, all were
within a few blocks. Our bubbes and
zaydes taught us Jewish roles. We
fought to be Jewish during the riots
of the early 1940s.
"Children today can make
choices — schools to go to, neighbor-
hoods to live in. Institutions have
changed, and all around the country
Jews are being accepted."
He described religious alterna-
tives facing Jewish children today,
and the negatives of drugs, crime
and cults. "There is no stigma today
in marrying a non-Jew," he said,
and he pointed to the divorce rate of
40-50 percent, the intermarriage
rate of 35-40 percent, the 50 percent
decrease in children attending
Jewish school in the last ten years,
and the growth of Jewish singles in
Detroit to 20 percent of the Jewish
population.
The Jewish Welfare Federation
is asking "45 of our best minds in
this city" to participate on the corn-
Continued on Page 18
Births
'nai Mitzvah
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ditorials
Engagements
Obituaries
Purely Commentary
Danny Raskin
69
67
.... /6
4
Rep. Sander Levin gets a
first-hand look at
Soviet Jewish life
refusenik style.