SHERWOOD STUDIOS
needed" to get singing roles,
she said.
The youngest daughter of
Oak Park pediatrician Dr.
Ralph and attorney Barbara
Cash remembers singing at
"Show and Tell" in
kindergarten. Her parents
sang in the Congregation
Beth Shalom choir and her
mother at one time taught
Jewish music.
"Our family sang together
a lot — we even had a five-
part harmony on the Kid-
dush" when older sister
Debra, now dance critic at
The Boston Globe and brother
Howard, a software engineer,
were home. "That's just part
of what Shabbat is to me."
During her Berkley High
School days, Cash performed
in operettas and was a voice
and drama major in the high
school division camp at In-
terlochen. "I had some heavy
duty culture due to my
parents, and I am very lucky
to have had it," she said.
LEATHER
She attended Yale Universi-
ty, originally planning to be
an actress. She performed in
campus productions such as
Peter Pan and Sweeney Todd,
but also was active in Jewish
student programs — even ser-
ving as cantor for more than
800 people attending High
Holiday., services at Dart-
mouth's Hillel in New Hamp-
shire. Thinking she wanted to
become a rabbi, she earned a
degree in Judaic Studies in
1983.
2 DAYS ONLY
Next came six months stu-
dying Talmud at Machon
Pardes, a coed yeshiva in
Jerusalem, which she hoped
would help her decide on a
career in the rabbinate.
Ultimately, she chose living
and singing in Israel, turning
down her acceptance to the
Jewish Theological
Seminary's rabbinical pro-
gram in favor of enrolling in
Tel Aviv University and stu-
dying drama.
SAT. & SUN. MARCH 4th & 5th
LEATHER SOFAS Reg. $1999
Reg. $1799
LOVESEATS
Reg. $1599
CHAIRS
Reg. $ 599
OTTOMANS
3 PC. SECTIONAL Reg. $4399
NICOLETTI OSAKA GROUP
50 % 70
Ex-Detroit Rabbi Tries
To 'Pump In' Judaism
NECHEMIA MEYERS
Special to The Jewish News
N
ever has it been so
easy or so difficult to
be a Jew in America.
As I saw once again on a re-
cent visit to the United
States, Jews there are ex-
traordinarily well-represent-
ed at the top levels of political
and intellectual life in the
U.S. So Jewishness is clearly
not an obstacle to advance-
ment in .America of the 80s.
Moreover, even the cautious
Jewish moguls of the enter-
tainment industry are no
longer afraid to deal with
openly Jewish topics in the
films and TV programs they
produce. For example, it is
hard to imagine that Crossing
Delancey, where traditional
Jewishness wins out over
assimilationism, would have
been screened a generation
ago.
Yet that traditional
Jewishness is not in very good
shape off-screen, because it
demands a tough, day-by-day
commitment that most
American Jews are loathe to
make. This was evident dur-
ing the morning I spent at the
Sunday School of Congrega-
tion Beth Shalom in Park
Forest, Ill.
Park Forest, a middle-class
suburb- 30 miles south of
Chicago, has a few hundred
Jewish families, of whom 120
belong to Beth Shalom. It is
an aging congregation, so its
Sunday school has no more
than a few dozen youngsters
enrolled. Yet Chicago-born
Rabbi Ellen Dreyfus does her
energetic best to whet their
interest in Judaism by
teaching them everything
from Jewish history to Jewish
songs (the latter to the accom-
paniment of her own guitar).
Rabbi Dreyfus, who was
associate rabbi of Oak Park's
Temple Emanu-El in 1982,
would be the first to admit
that she is fighting an uphill
battle, because the parents of
these youngsters don't pro-
vide reinforcement at home.
"To most of them," she ex-
plains, "Judaism is a religion,
but not a way of life. They cer-
tainly don't see it as suffi-
ciently significant to affect
crucial decisions, such as
deciding on the neighborhood
in which they are to live. They
won't seek out a specifically
Jewish neighborhood, where
their children would have ac-
cess to Jewish cultural
facilities, meet Jewish friends
and have a better chance of
ending up with a Jewish
spouse."
However, they still want
their kids to be Jewish. So
they send them to Sunday
school, which in Rabbi
Dreyfus' words, is supposed to
serve as "a spiritual filling
station." The school is ex-
pected to pump a few gallons
of Judaism into the
youngsters before their
parents pick them up and
return them to their basical-
ly non-Jewish life.
SALE $ 999
SALE $ 899
SALE $ 799
SALE $ 299
SALE $2199
OFF
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
39