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 SHERWOOD WAREHOUSE SATURDAY 10 AM - 5 PM SUNDAY 12 NOON - 5 PM 24734 CRESTVIEW CT. 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