NEWS FOOTSTEPS PODIATRY CLINIC STAFF Ambivalence 13740 W. 9 Mile Continued from preceding page Next to Oak Park Post Office wish all their patients, friends and family a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season and a Happy New Year! 548-6633 Best Wishes for a Happy New Year THE GORNBEIN FAMILY AND STAFF Carl and Myra Gornbein Mark Gornbein • Fay Fries Norman Gornbein Sharon Gornbein Arline Allen • Arthur Greenwald Frankie Fish • Lillian DeRoven r. GORNBEINO JEWELERS 106 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1988 357-1056 SUITE 110 - HERITAGE PLAZA 24901 NORTHWESTERN HWY. SOUTHFIELD HOURS: MON.-FRI. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. • SAT. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. especially in an era of rapid- ly developing technology, is wholly spurious. People refus- ed exit visas on these grounds have no right of appeal, or any way of finding out who imposed the security restric- tion against them or when it will expire. Others are denied permis- sion to leave because of their inability to obtain the necessary financial waiver from family remain- ing in the USSR. The mere fact that there are no out- standing material claims against the applicant is not sufficient. A refusal by so- meone to sign that he has no claims can delay the depar- ture of a would-be emigrant indefinitely. To date, there is no Soviet law which requires someone to state his claims within a certain period of time or lose the right to make them. For several months now, senior Soviet officials have been talking about new legislation, currently under preparation, which will resolve both these problems. As yet, there is no firm date when this legislation will ac- tually appear on the statute books, or exactly what its pro- visions will be. One of the most troubling aspects of the current emigra- tion movement is the high percentage of Soviet Jews who leave the USSR on visas for Israel but choose to settle elsewhere. Since the late 1970s, the drop-out rate has fluctuated between 70 and 80 percent. In June 1988, it reached an all-time high of over 90 percent, spurring the Israeli government to toughen its stance on the issue. The Israeli cabinet recent- ly voted to oblige all Soviet Jews who have applied with invitations from Israel, to come to Israel, irrespective of when they first applied for an exit visa. In the future, all en- try visas to Israel wil be issued not by the Dutch Em- bassy in Moscow, but by the Israeli Embassy in Bucharest. There can be no guarantee that the increase in the number of Jews allowed to leave the USSR and the more relaxed attitude to unofficial Jewish activities will con- tinue. Soviet Jews, as a minority within the USSR, suffer from severe discrimina- tion. Those who apply to leave, run the risk of losing a good job and security, to be replaced by years of a mean- ingless existence in refusal, harassment and possible ar- rest. While the past year has seen the release from im- prisonment of all the remain- ing prisoners for Zion, the future for those Jews living in the USSR or wishing to leave is very uncertain. World Zionist Press Service -"ml NOTEBOOK Immimmimmm Yiddish Classics Taped To Preserve Language BEN GALLOB Special to The Jewish News N ew York — A one-man effort by a college student to salvage forgotten and discarded Yid- dish books has grown into a bustling international enter- prise, applying modern technology to help stimulate use of a dying language. It began when Aaron Lan- sky was a student at McGill University in Montreal, where his major was Euro- pean Jewish studies, with a concentration in Yiddish literature. On a hunch one day, he began to visit Jewish homes in Montreal, asking residents for Yiddish books they owned but couldn't read. He discovered a surprising number that did. Graduating in 1980 with a masters degree in Yiddish literature, he returned home to Amherst, Mass., and resumed the hunt for discard- ed Yiddish books. As news of his search spread, his house soon became inundated with Yiddish books. He realized that he needed a more structured enterprise, so he started the National Yiddish Book Center. At first the center rented space in an Amherst factory, but soon they outgrew it. lb the rescue came the town of Holyoke, Mass., which donated a former school building to the center. So far, the center has 850,000 books collected and stored there. The center's of- fices, meanwhile, are head- quartered in Amherst. Lansky, 33, said the first phase of the center's long- range program was collecting books. The second phase is getting the books into research and university libraries.