56

Friday, November 22, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

SPECIAL
CURRICULUM

Southfield's Marty Pasternak
is combining two unique
professions: rabbinics and
the U.S. Navy

BY NOAM GELFOND
Special to The Jewish News

These days, rabbinical students
from Detroit are a rare breed. Find-
ing someone who's simultaneously
enisted in the military is even more
rare. But Southfield's Marty Paster-
nak, 26, is pulling off this unusual
double play and enjoying both roles.
Choosing rabbinical school was
a decision that came relatively late
for Pasternak. "It's not something I'd
been contemplating for years," he
says. As a Hillel Day School
graduate and "golden boy" of Cong.
B'nai Moshe and United Synagogue
Youth (USY) people frequently told
him he'd make a great rabbi, but
Pastnernak remembers that "I'd look
at them and say they were crazy,"
because he just wasn't interested.
But after a number of frustrat-
ing attempts to crack the labor rela-
tions field and a one-year stint as a
waiter at T. G. I. Fridays, he chose
to lead a USY group to Israel and
there, his outlook began to change.
Being away from school and the
endless slew of job interviews gave
him some much needed perspective.
"I played the role and did everything
right. But over time I realized deep
inside of me it (labor relations)
wasn't what I wanted to do."
Traveling and experiencing Is-

,

rael again, this time with his youth
group, convinced him that "I didn't
want to be part of that larger corpo-
rate superstructure where a person
never really peaks out until they're
too old to take advantage of it. So . I
took advantage of everything I'd
learned about career counseling and
counseled myself."
Sounds simple enough. By look-
ing at himself anew and forming a
mental list of what made him happy
and fulfilled, and evaluating his
skills and talents, he eventually
came around to rabbinical school.
His previous schooling included
labor relations degrees from Michi-
gan State University in 1981 and
Ohio State University in 1982. His
career was off to an auspicious and
optimistic start when the City of
Southfield hired him as a personnel
assistant to help settle a contract
with the city's Police Command
Unit.
The job was intended to last
only until the contract was settled
— in most cases that meant about a
year and a half. In the past, each
contract went to arbitration," Pas-
ternak explains. But his time the
two sides came to an unusually
quick settlement. Had we not set-