I PEOPLE Laval Brown is on a one-man mission teaching Detroit schoolchildren about Israel and the Mideast- PEACE ISN'T COLORBLIND HEIDI PRESS News Editor Cassandra Langley, left, and Brown's daughter, Latrina, review a story. AA coinnv kAAV omewhere along the road to becoming an inter- preter for the. State De- partment, Laval Brown took a detour. His mission changed, at least temporarily, from studying for that post to promoting peace and understanding between cultures. He decided to start with black elementary schoolchildren. A part-time teacher at Ilene Elementary School in Detroit, Brown said he felt that black children weren't getting enough education about other cultures. A student of languages — he's working on a degree at Wayne State University — Brown gave himself an assignment to teach the children Hebrew and about Israel. At first, Brown was met by opposi- tion from other teachers at the school, when he really expected the parents to be upset because everything they knew about Israel they were getting from the nightly TV newscasts. (Any knowledge the children had about Israel they learned from the Bible, he said.) But, when the parents saw how excited the children were about learn- ing Hebrew, they were supportive of the class. From that point, Brown ex- plains, "it's been positive," and now 20 third through fifth graders are benefitting from his enthusiasm. How this black part-time teacher and university student came to teach Hebrew makes for an unusual tale. Brown's original professional in- tention was to become an interpreter for the U.S. government. In prepara- tion for this job, he studied Russian and Cantonese. He picked these languages because "I wanted to take up something different. I wanted to study cultures that weren't well known here in the States:' Yet, lear- ning these two difficult languages wasn't enough. Because of his love for history, Brown said, he also felt a need to study Hebrew as well. He got involved in Hebrew study through a connection he made while an employee at Sinai Hospital. A doc- tor on staff at Sinai had heard about Brown's interest in learning Hebrew and knew that one of the hospital's volunteers,Jonas Segal, would be able to teach Brown. The doctor brought Segal, a retired Wayne State Univer- sity and Cass Thch instructor, and Brown together and the pupil-teacher relationship was well under way. "He was a very apt pupil," Segal recalled. "He has a flair for languages. He was progressing nicely?' To give Brown a taste of native Hebrew, Segal took him on a per- sonalized visit to Israel. "Jonas thought it was a good idea for me to go to Israel and see it first-hand," Brown explained. He had expected to see terrorists and bombs flying overhead, but soon realized that was not the case. While in Israel, Brown was introduced to kibbutzim, mosh- avim, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and sabras. What he found most remarkable was the Israeli children's desire for knowledge. Brown said the children had never seen a black man before and pelted him with questions. He laughed as he remembered the children asking him if he could play basketball and break dance. It was their impression that all blacks could do both. He disappointed them; he didn't do very well at either.