CLOSE-UP
Campaign's Super Sunday. Twenty-
eight responded favorably.
While a few Orthodox Jews have
participated in the Jewish Welfare
Federation structure, Steinmetz's at-
tempt was the first to try to enlist
them en masse. "No one ever asked
them before!' he says. "Not personal-
ly. They want to be asked, I guess."
Mark Schlussel, an attorney and
a Federation vice president, sees
growing Orthodox participation in
community institutions as a result of
a "coming together of value systems?'
"Federation has become very sen-
sitized to the importance of religious
values," he explains. It has also
recognized the importance of Jewish
education, a top priority of all Or-
thodox Jews.
"In the last 15 years, Federation •
support of day schools has gone up
100-fold." Federation monies are now
"significant components" of day
school budgets, says Schlussel, who is
himself Orthodox.
Increased Orthodox participation
in non-religious institutions such as
the Federation is also a function of the
community's coming of age. Says
Schlussel, "People in the Orthodox
community have acquired significant
influence in secular business com-
munities with increased opportunity
to influence things around them!'
In addition, Orthodox Jews are
beginning to realize that the Allied
Jewish Campaign war chest could be
an excellent source of funding for
their proliferating and increasingly
financially strained institutions.
"Oftentimes we're criticized for
not being seen in the mainstream of
charities!' Rabbi Freedman com-
ments. "Most people don't understand
the tremendous burdens" required in
maintaining Orthodox institutions,
most of which receive no Federation
funding.
Ususally the least affluent seg-
ment of the Jewish community, the
Orthodox nevertheless give a larger
proportion of their income to charity
than less-observant Jews.
Both Schlussel and Steinmetz at-
tend synagogues belonging to the na-
tional Young Israel movement. With
three local synagogues and a fourth
planned for West Bloomfield, Young
Israel "combines the idea of secular
success without compromising
religious concerns," according to Rab-
bi Reuven Drucker of Young Israel of
Greenfield.
Young Israel members generally
are grouped under the designation of
"modern" or "centrist" Orthodox,
those strictly religious Jews who try
to create a synthesis between their
religion and the secular society in
which they live.
Those further to the right on the
religious spectrum are often called
"ultra-Orthodox," although they
strongly resist labels. These Jews
seek to limit their contact with the
secular world, disdain a university
education and are ambivalent in their
support for the State of Israel.
There is no single "Orthodox"
viewpoint. The modern Orthodox
tend to divide the community by one's
approach to the modern world, and
refer to progressive versus insular
Jews. The ultra-Orthodox place Jews
on a spectrum according to the posi-
tion that Torah learning plays in their
lives.
Rabbi Jacobovitz sees three
categories on this spectrum: what he
calls "status quo Jews" who are Jews
because of family lineage; "action-
oriented Jews who are interested in
learning and growing"; and a middle
group who are interested in learning,
"but not as the most important thing
ome 40 years ago, the Sto-
liner Rebbe died while on
a visit to Detroit. That
the rebbe had brought his
kittel was taken as a sign
by his followers that he wanted to be
buried here.
Ever since, the rebbe's chasidim
--- his followers -- have come from
New York to spend a Shabbat in
Detroit on the anniversary of his
death.
• Chasidic culture, rich in tales of
wonders and miracles, is painfully
poor when it comes to Detroit. That
is because there are so few chasidini
here,
"Chasidim tend to stick together
and stick to the Tebbe. And if there's
no rebbe in the city, they just won't
move there," explains Rabbi Michel
Xriger, a teacher at Yeshivath Beth
Yehudah,
Rabbi Kriger found a local rebbe
in Rabbi Yitzhok Zvi (Herman)
Deutsch who, until his death several
months ago, led a small congrega-
tion in prayer and celebration in the
basement of his Oak Park home.
Years back, Rabbi Deutsch, a
disciple of the Satmar Rebbe, follow-
ed his rebbe's bidding and moved
from New York to Detroit, according
to Rabbi Kriger.
wa
take- There is only
chaasl idi
movement that makes
Y °lle
it
send rabbis and their
p°11c3r t°
from the cloister of their
rebbe
falies
w s
court: the Lubavitchers, or Chabad.
chasidun, who see their calling as
leaving the security of the Orthodox
world in order to bring non religious
Jews back to Jewish observance.
Chabad houses in such places as
West Bloomfield, Farmington Hills
and Ann Arbor were established,
not so much to serve Chabad
chasidim as to function as service
centers for Jews who need a place to
pray or who are interested in study-
ing Chasidic Orthodoxy.
The Lubavitch community in
Detroit is actually rather small —
about 60 families almost all of whom
live in Oak Park, according to Rab-
bi Yitzhak Kagan, president of the
local Lubavitch Foundation.
For Rabbi Kagan, a native of
Great Britain who has lived in
Detroit for 22 years, it is "activist"
Orthodox Jews like the Lubavit-
chers who will keep the lines of com-
munication open with the larger
non-Orthodox community.
And, he says, it is Chasidism
that can best answer the fears of
many Orthodox parents that their
may s u
ar pleasures.
m believe the joy deriv
mundane acts like singing •
'is holy and in the ser-
vice d.. Chasidism, founded in
Easteritpe in the 18th Century
consciously seep to nourish the
Jewish soul, often neglected in the
rational pursuit of Talmud study.
"'Without the extra spark of
Chasidism, Torah learning on its
own would not be enough," Rabbi
Kagan argues. "Without the deeper
philosophy of chasidism, we would
be exposed to the ravages of a chang-
ing society."
Not surprisingly, non-chasidic
Orthodox Jews don't view Chasidism
as the be-all and end-all of Judaism.
"Man has two sides, his intellec-
tual and his emotional," says Rabbi
Reuven Drucker of Young Israel of
Greenfield. A Jew who favors an in-
tellectual pursuit of Judaism is not
necessarily devoid of the emotional
aspect. "Prayer itself is a
transcendental experience."
"There is a certain amount of in-
dividual expression in Torah
Judaism, and we can't all go by the
same tune," comments Rabbi Moshe
Schwab of the Kollel. "It's like a
symphony orchestra. If you only had
a drum, it would be very dull."
26
FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 1988
'
in their lives."
How one ranks is not a function
of the number of hours he spends stu-
dying Torah, the rabbi says. "It's the
attitude of the individual that is most
important?'
SURA AND
PUMBEDITA
It is Wednesday night and the
Kollel Institute on Lincoln Road is
crowded. A line of black hats rings the
cloak room while their owners engage
in scholarly pursuits. A narrow
passageway leads to the study room
which is reached after descending a
few steps.
Large volumes of Talmud fill rows
of bookshelves. At tables and at lec-
turns sit 20 men and boys, studying
in pairs the complexities of Jewish
law.
The partners use each other as
sounding boards to test their
knowledge. The interplay of exegesis
and challenge, argument and
counterargument, produces a
"cacophony of sound," according to
Eliyahu Allon, who studies four hours
a week at the Kollel. "There's scream-
ing sometimes. You'd think that peo-
ple are mad at each other at times.
But it's all in the pursuit of a deeper
understanding?'
"It's like Sura and Pumbedita,"
the sites of the great Babylonian
academies of two millenia ago which
produced the Talmud, says Rabbi
Moshe Schwab who heads the in-
stitute. His partner, Rabbi Shmuel
Irons, asserts, "It's our real link with
history. Here, we're creating true
scholars?'
Shraga Rothbart is one of the
Kollel's full-time students. At 26,
Rothbart, a New York native, has
been following the institute's 12-hour-
a-day, six-day-a-week regimen for four
years.
His rigorous and ascetic life of
study and prayer is not a means to an
end, he explains. "People here are not
striving to become something. The
end result is not to produce rabbis?'
Through his endeavors, Rothbart
hopes to become a better Jew and this,
he says, is worth material and per-
sonal sacrifice.
"Judaism represents a very
demanding ideal, a striving for
spirituality more than materialism,
a more careful observance of the com-
mandments. My entire family is mak-
ing a commitment to excellence?'
Unlike her husband, who as a
child attended a Conservative day
school and synagogue, Debbie
Rothbart was raised in an Orthodox
family.
Born in Montreal, Debbie says she
realized early on that a career-
oriented life, even an Orthodox one,
would be a meager existence. "I was
looking for a guy who would be (stu-
dying) in yeshivah. I felt that life is
short and there's a lot to learn, and