Friday, November 22, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Bill Puglia no
14
A rare, quiet moment at home for Larry and Shelly Jackier.
BY DEBBIE WALLIS LANDAU
Special to the Jewish News
arry and Shelly
Jackier must often feel like
the proverbial two ships
passing in the night. Con-
sider Oct. 9 for example.
Larry, a United Jewish Appeal
national vice chairman and national
missions chairman, embarked on an
eight-day Presidents Mission to Is-
rael, Vienna and the Mauthausen
Concentration Camp in northern
Austria. The mission was the
second-largest fund-raising trip of
the year sponsored by UJA with the
cooperation of the Jewish Welfare
Federation. It was also Larry's third
trip to Israel since January.
While other Detroiter were sip-
ping their first morning coffee Oct.
9, Shelly was at the Southfield Hil-
ton preparing to welcome nearly 200
participants and guests to a day-long
symposium on the recent United
States Free Trade Agreement with
Israel. As executive director of the
new Detroit branch of the
American-Israel Chamber of Com-
merce, Shelly was seeing months of
intense preparations culminate in
this first joint venture between the
Chamber, the Michigan Department
of Commerce and the U.S. Com-
merce Department.
The next day she would be
ensconced as usual in her cluttered
office on the second floor of the
Jewish Community Center in West
Bloomfield. She would make ar-
rangements for a forthcoming recital
by her Israeli folk dance group, Hora
Aviv; try to locate Chamber board
members to plan a future meeting;
prepare some notes for a talk on be-
half of Bar-Ilan University: and try
to fulfill both parental roles for
daughter Ariana, 14 1/2, and son Seth,
12, in Larry's absence.
When Larry returned to Michi-
gan on Oct. 16, the demands of his
busy legal practice would again be-
ckon. Co-mingled with his workday
duties at Schlussel, Lifton, Simon,
Rands, Kaufman, Galvin & Jackier
are the responsibilities he shares
with three other vice chairmen of
the 1986 Allied Jewish Campaign.
For the third consecutive year,
Larry was elected vice president of
the Detroit Holocaust Memorial
Center. He's also local chairman of
Project Renewal and a board
member of United Jewish Charities.
In addition, he serves on the execu-
tive committees of Bar-Ilan Univer-
sity, the Jewish Welfare Federation .
and the Jewish Community Council.
A longtime, ardent advocate of free-
dom for Soviet Jewry, Larry — with
Joel Gershenson and other local in-
dividuals — was instrumental in the
re-structuring of the Detroit Soviet
Jewry Committee of the Jewish
Community Council in the early
1980s.
A myriad of other concerns —
both global and local — challenge
his energies daily. And he somehow
finds time for them all.
"Being active Jewishly can take
away from the family unit," Larry
admits soberly. But the bottom line
is incredibly enriching friendships."
Addressing the positive side of
any challenge seems to come quite
naturally to both Jackiers. They
know there's no real shortcut to Is-
rael, Moscow, or Ethiopia — except
through communication. Building
bridges is what both Shelly and
Larry Jackier do so well. They cross
not only physical miles but intangi-
ble ones: gaps in understanding and
information.
The couple has had a significant
impact on the way Detroit's Jewish
community has come to support fel-
low Jews in Israel and the Diaspora.
While fund raising has been a major
focus of their widespread efforts, the
encouragement of solidarity with
Jews in difficulty and the
strengthening of American Jews'
emotional links to the Promised
Land have predominated their con-
tributions.
One of the major reasons Larry
has become so enthusiastic about
leading people on missions to Israel
— and he does so several times a
year — is because "It's very difficult