UP FRONT
Third Kosher Butcher Shop
Closes Within One Year
One of Detroit's nine remaining
kosher butcher shops has closed- its
doors, bringing to three the number
of kosher butcher shops which have
closed here in the last year.
Franklin Kosher Meats in West
Bloomfield closed last week. Owner
Don Barden was unable to be reach-
ed for comment, but Allan Cohen,
president of the Detroit Area Kosher
Retail Meat Dealers Association, told
The Jewish News that the industry as
a whole has been hit hard. "In the
next two or three years," Cohen said,
"you'll have three stores left."
Rabbi Chaskell Grubner of the
Council of Orthodox Rabbis of
Greater Detroit blamed the Franklin
closure on high costs. "It was a finan-
cial thing. He had high costs, high
rent." The council required the hiring
of a Sabbath-observant worker last
April after meat destined for a
neighboring non-kosher restaurant
was found at the store.
Cohen sees a number of factors in
the reduction of kosher butcher shops •
in the Detroit area. He cited the grow-
ing number of working women,
leading to increasing use of
restaurants and "pre-cooked mer-
chandise;" artificially-set high prices
and the decreasing number of
wholesale suppliers and policies of the
council of rabbis, which he disagrees
with.
The result, he said, "is the in-
dependent, custom service butcher
store is a dying breed."
Two Oak Park stores also closed
within the last year: Lincoln Kosher
Meats in Lincoln Center on Green-
field, and Northgate, which moved
from another Oak. Park location into
Lincoln's space. Avrum Reaboi, owner
of Strictly Kosher Meats in Oak Park,
died last week, but the store is expec-
ting to continue operating.
Congressmen Get Involved
In Divided Spouse Fight
ALAN HITSKY
Associate Editor
T
he offices of U.S. Senator Carl
Levin and his brother, Con-
gressman Sander Levin, are
planning to respond to a recent letter
from the . Soviet Embassy in
Washington which claims Svetlana
Braun has been denied permission to
emigrate from the Soviet Union "due
to her previous access to highly
classified information."
Svetlana, now 24, has been mar-
ried three years to Southfield at-
torney Keith Braun. "There is no
doubt," Braun said last week, "that
a girl who was then 21, and has never
had a full-time job, never had access
to secrets:'
Sander Levin called the letter
from Soviet Minister-Counselor
Evgeny Kunovoy "totally unaccep-
table?' Both Levins will discuss an ap-
propriate response with their staffs
Continued on Page 16
A Pittsburgh runner breaks past Detroit's Josh Rubin.
Detroit Team Strikes Gold
At Maccabia Games
Detroit athletes earned 100 in-
dividual medals and took a gold,
silver and bronze in team sports at
the Midwest regional Maccabia
Games in Cleveland last week. Sixty
athletes from. Detroit, aged 11-16,
were among the 350 participants who
represented Pittsburgh, Chicago,
Dayton, Cleveland, Columbus,
Detroit and Ann Arbor at the games.
The events were held at the new
Mayfield Mandell Jewish Communi-
ty Center in Beechwood, and Detroit
team manager Jay Robinson credited
the Cleveland Jewish community "for
putting on a wonderful show."
Cleveland families hosted the young
athletes and sponsored hospitality
events during the Maccabia, in-
cluding a barbecue and a dance.
At the opening ceremonies, Dr.
David Berger addressed the athletes.
His son was one of the 11 'Israeli
athletes murdered by PLO terrorists
at the Olympic Games in Munich in
1972. A special award for sportsman-
ship was given to the Pittsburgh girls
basketball team in his memory.
Detroit's soccer team, coached by
Gabriel Attar, won the gold medal.
The team included Lenny Biegler,
Josh Broder, Shaw Brown, Kirk
Cassidy, Ben Geller, Jason Goldsmith,
Lorne Kolodin, Howard Larky, Ari
Nessel, Josh Richelew, Jeff
Rosenblum, Howard Rosenthal,
Jonathan Starkman and Randy
Sweetwine. •
The boys softball team took a
silver medal. Team members were
Craig Aronoff, Steve Goldman, Steve
Continued on Page 16
I ROUND UP
Fighting Fire
With Fire
Haifa — Summer is the
season of the hot, dry cham-
sin winds in the Middle East
and their sister winds, the
Santa Anas in California. It
is the season when the tinder-
dry wood ignites almost
automatically, destroying
forest land, property and
lives.
According to Dr. Pua Kutiel,
lecturer in Technion's faculty
of agricultural engineering,
the use of prescribed (plann-
-ed) fires can retard the rapid
spread of forest fires.
Prescribed fires reduce ac-
cumulated fuels in the
ecosystem, thus making the
forest itself less flammable.
They also help increase or
maintain nitrogen
mineralization rates needed
for healthy trees and plants.
In addition, planting different
species of plants and shrubs,
including fire-retardant ones,
not only adds to the beauty of
the surroundings but also
helps prevent the fast spread
of fire.
Shabbat Phone
Mystery Solved
New York (JTA) — The
"Monticello Mystery," which
for years baffled the New
York Telephone Co. and ex-
asperated people by com-
plicating their attempts to
make phone calls, was solved
recently by a combination of
deduction and dialogue.
The mystery used to emerge
on schedule — about an hour
before Friday in the summers
— and last 25 hours. The
many Orthodox Jewish vaca-
tioners in the Monticello,
N.Y., area in the Catskills
would remove their telephone
receivers from the cradle so as
not to be bothered during the
Sabbath by the ring. The
result was dial Wile delays of
several minutes and a
buildup of busy circuits for
non-Jews and non-Orthodox
Jews in the Catskills.
• The New York Iblephone
Co. began disconnecting off-
the-hook telephones through
its central office, riling its Or-
thodox customers. Now the
utility has come up with a
permanent solution: a four-
page English-and-Yiddish
pamphlet that shows
customers how to disconnect
their phones at the wall
outlet.
Copies of the pamphlet
were mailed to Catskills
subscribers in June and are
carried by company repair
personnel on troubleshooting
calls.
Students Protest
Anti-Jewish Play
London (JTA) — Nearly 100
Jewish students last week
demonstrated in Edinburgh
against the first public
reading of "Perdition?' a play
which suggests Zionist com-
plicity in the Nazi Holocaust.
Jewish youth groups, some of
which travelled from London,
Manchester and Glasgow,
stood outside. Edinburgh's
Royal Lyceum Studio Theater
and held placards, distributed
leaflets and gave pavement
readings of literature about
the Holocaust.
The play has been the
center -of controversy since
last January when London's
Royal Court Theatre scrapped
the premier at only two day's
notice. Performances have
also been abandoned in other
cities following protests by
Jewish groups that the play is
malicious distortion of events
in Hungary in 1944.
Playwright Jim Allen, a
leftwinger who claims
flawless anti-racist creden-
tials, said that he was out to
counter the "Hollywood ver-
sion" of the Holocaust and the
State of Israel epitomized by
the film Exodus.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 5