UP FRONT

Jewish Center Inaugurates
Entertainment Series

HEIDI PRESS

News Editor

c

Bernard Friedman moves up a notch.

The Pesident's Call Signals
Move Up Judicial Ladder

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KIMBERLY LIFTON

Staff Writer

of every judgeship comes
complete with a lifetime
job guarantee. And the Presi-
dent of the United States doesn't per-
sonally make many of these offers.
So it was understandable that
48th District Judge Bernard Fried-
man was ecstatic — and a bit nervous
— when President Ronald Reagan
telephoned the courthouse on Monday
to offer him a new job as a federal
judge in Detroit.
"It put me in a great mood," said
Friedman, who has served on the
district court bench since 1982. "But

I was shaking during the conversa-
tion. I crammed a lot into the 1
1/2-minute phone call.
"I've been calm as a lawyer and
on the bench. I've tried some pretty
big cases and I never got nervous;'
Friedman said. "But I did when the
President called. It's exciting to get a
lifetime job offer from the President."
Reagan told Friedman he was
signing the appointment, making for-
mal a nomination by U.S. Rep.
William Broomfield, R-Birmingham.
Friedman would replace U.S. District
Judge Robert DeMascio, who became
a senior judge in January.
The U.S. Senate must approve the
Continued on Page 16

omedian Yakov Smirnoff will
kick off a new special enter-
tainment series created by the
cultural arts department of the
Jewish Community Center.
Beginning Feb. 13 at the
Maple/Drake Center, Smirnoff will
head up a series which includes a
Sephardic music concert; an ap-
pearance by Marilyn Cantor,
daughter of entertainer Eddie Can-
tor; a performance by singer-actress
Marilyn Michaels and her Yiddish
theater-actress mother Fraydele
Oysher; a lecture by Bel Kaufman,
granddaughter of author Sholom
Aleichem; a wine-tasting party with
entertainment; and an evening on
Broadway.
According to Adele Silver, Jewish
Center cultural arts director, there is
a thread that ties together the
Michaels-Oysher, Smirnoff, Cantor
and Kaufman programs — Jewish
humor and how it's passed down from
one generation to the next. She ex-
plained that Michaels continues her
mother's comic Yiddish theater tradi-
tion by herself becoming an
impressionist/actress/singer.
Cantor speaks about growing up
in the home of her comedian father
and Kaufman, an author in her own
right, recalls the stories of her grand-
father Sholom Aleichem (pen name of
S. Rabinowitz). "We're passing on
what's good in our tradition to the
next generation," Silver explained.
And what about Smirnoff? What
tradition is he continuing? "Yakov,
he's new, he's Jewish, He's a new wave
of Jewish comic," Silver said. She said
because of his immigrant tradition,

she felt he was an appropriate com-
plement to the series.
Silver said she hoped that the
series would point out the good
qualities of Judaism. "We want peo-
ple to associate with positive things,"
she explained, adding that "people
like to laugh. We want our audiences
to laugh. You understand yourself
through laughter."
The timing of the start of the
series is significant as well. Silver
said that it begins in February to
break up the dreariness of winter.

Yakov Smirnoff leads off a series focusing on
Jewish humor.

"We wanted something light in
February. Everything is so grey."
A total of 800 tickets per show is
available, and according to Silver,
"each seat is perfect. I sat in it
myself1" Silver explained how the
seating area was arranged with a
graph and after each of the seats was
Continued on Page 16

ROUND UP

Rally At MSU
Attracts 400

About 400 students and
faculty members packed an
assembly hall at Michigan
State University last week for
a forum aimed at combatting
anti-Semitism on the campus.
Professors, student activists
and representatives of the
Hillel Jewish Student Center
organized the forum after an
editorial cartoon published in
the school's student-run
newspaper compared the
Israeli government with the
Nazis.
Michigan Anti-Defamation
League Executive Director
Richard Lobenthal was

among the speakers at the
forum, and accused the MSU
newspaper and letter writer
Chet Gribowski of being
anti-Semitic.
Hillel representatives said
the assembly drew a record
crowd for the group and add-
ed that it should help counter
the ignorance that has surfac-
ed on campus.

High Court Acts
On Converts

Jerusalem (JTA) — The
Supreme Court gave the In-
terior Ministry seven days on
Monday to register non-
Orthodox convert Shoshana
Miller as Jewish or show

cause why it failed to comply
with a court order to do so
issued a year ago.
The high court acted a day
after the ministry agreed
reluctantly to register three
other non-Orthodox converts
within 14 days rather than
answer their appeal, which
had gained the support of At-
torney General Yosef Harish.
Non-Orthodox circles in
Israel hailed both
developments as significant
progress in their efforts to
prevent the Orthodox
religious establishment from
amending the Law of Return,
allowing Israeli citizenship to
all Jews who seek it. The
amendment would recognize
only halachic (Jewish legal) —

in other words, Orthodox —
conversions.

Inouye 'Erred'
On Allocation

Washington (JTA) - Con-
ceding "an error in judg-
ment," Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-
Hawaii) announced Monday
he would seek to rescind the
controversial $8 million
allocation he inserted in the
1988 federal spending bill to
build yeshivot in France.
The money was to be provid-
ed to Ozar Hatorah, a New
York-based Orthodox Jewish
organization. Discovery of the
allocation provoked an outcry
from across the political
spectrum.

Illness Delays
The Volvovskys

Leonid and Mila Volvovsky
have been delayed in leaving
the Soviet Union to join their
daughter in Israel because of
cancer surgery performed
recently on Mila's mother.
The Volvovskys have been
the subject of an interna-
tional campaign for their
release, which has been join-
ed by several Detroit area
synagogues and their cousins
here, Cindy Franklin and her
father Martin Weston.
The Volvovskys' daughter,
Kira, was allowed to emigrate
in December. The family have
been refuseniks since 1974.

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