UP FRONT
Temple Israel Expansion
Plans Are Underway
KIMBERLY LIFTON
Staff Writer
C
Armand Lauffer: "The Jewish community hasn't used Jewish brainpower."
Michigan's Proposed STaR
Will Train Jewish Professionals
SUSAN WDMER-GLIEBE
Special to The Jewish News
T
he town and gown
division that often
separates universities
from their surrounding com-
munities is a well-recognized
phenomenon. Armand Lauf-
fer, professor of social work at
the University of Michigan,
believes there's a similar par-
ing that operates within a
specifically Jewish context.
"My feeling has been that
neither Jewish communal in-
stitutions nor Jewish
academics have known how to
communicate with one
another," says Lauffer. That
gap in communication has
bothered Lauffer, professional-
ly and personally. "My con-
cern is that the Jewish com-
munity hasn't used Jewish
brainpower."
Lauffer — and a host of
others — believe that's about
to change with the recent
establishment of Project STaR
(Service Training and
Research in Jewish Corn-
munal Development) at U-M.
Project STaR was specifically
developed to link the resources
of academia with those of the
broader Jewish community.
With a $150,000 start-up
grant from the Max M. Fisher
Jewish Community Founda-
tion of United Jewish
Charities in Detroit and an
additional $328,000 in fund-
ing and services from U-M
and other sources, the project
is quietly being built. "We
Continued on Page 14
onstruction for addi-
tional classrooms and
a new youth wing at
Temple Israel is scheduled to
begin in June, temple officials
said Tuesday.
Groundbreaking, tentative-
ly slated for June 4 for the
estimated $2 to $3 million
renovation project, comes
after two years of planning for
the congregation'S future.
Temple Israel Administra-
tor Eva Shapiro said addi-
tions to the temple on Walnut
Lake Road in West Bloom-
field should be constructed by
late 1990 or early 1991. The
temple now is accepting con-
struction bids for the project.
"We are trying to better
serve the needs of our con-
gregation. We are underbuilt
and overused," Shapiro said.
"We are pleased with the sup-
port from our members."
Shapiro said temple leaders
have raised enough money
from the congregation's 2,200
family members to begin the
project. She declined to offer
specific figures, , saying only
that Temple Israel is halfway
through the fund-raising
campaign.
Temple Israel holds
religious classes for its 1,500
students in three buildings:
the temple, Green Elemen-
tary School and Orchard
Lake Middle School.
Temple Israel built 10
classrooms when it moved to
the site from the Palmer Park
area in Detroit eight years
ago. The congregation was
smaller at the time, and plan-
ners 'didn't know how exten-
sive temple programming
would become or how quick-
ly the congregation would
grow.
"We have tremendous pro-
gramming and no space,"
Shapiro said. "Everything is
used here all of the time. We
are trying to accommodate
our members!'
In addition to the congrega-
tion's daily activities, a
Temple Israel
holds religious
classes for its
1,500 students in
three buildings:
the temple, Green
Elementary School
and Orchard Lake
Middle School.
myriad of regular programs —
including bereavement sup-
port groups, Alcoholic
Anonymous and Alanon
meetings, Jewish substance
abuse counseling, and
Alzheimer's disease support
groups — are sponsored by the
temple for the metropolitan
Detroit Jewish community.
Thmple Israel is the only
congregation in metropolitan
Detroit with three rabbis —
Harold Loss, Paul Yedwab
and M. Robert Syme.
'ROUND UP
Pollard's Wife
Wants Transfer
Minneapolis — Anne
Henderson-Pollard asked this
week that she be transferred
from a prison hospital in
Rochester because, she said,
she is "hated by ad-
ministrative and medical per-
sonnel."
Henderson-Pollard, the wife
of Jonathan Jay Pollard, who
was convicted of spying for
Israel, is serving two concur-
rent five-year prison terms.
WJC To Open
Budapest Office
New York • (JTA) — The
World Jewish Congress an-
nounced last week that it will
open an office in Budapest in
July.
The bureau in the
Hungarian capital will mark
the first time a WJC office
will be established in a Com-
munist country.
Speculation has been grow-
ing in recent weeks that
Hungary and Israel could
renew full diplomatic ties by
the end of April. Earlier this
month, the Hungarian
ministers of communications,
transport and construction
signed an accord on travel
between the two • countries.
2 Groups Say
Nuns Not Going
New York (JTA) — Two
delegations that visited the
Carmelite convent at
Auschwitz recently saw a
newly erected 20-foot cross
there and say it appears that
the nuns are not planning to
leave, despite assurances from
Catholic officials to the
contrary.
A French-Belgian delega-
tion that included a Catholic
priest was stopped from enter-
ing the convent last week,
and a petition from the group
asking the nuns to leave was
rejected.-
The 10 or so nuns living in
the convent have not moved,
despite an agreement signed
by Catholic officials in
Geneva two years ago that
pledged the convent would be
relocated by Feb. 22, 1989.
The failure to make good on
that promise has soured
Catholic-Jewish relations
worldwide. The presence of
the convent on the site where
more than 2 million Jews
were murdered is deeply of-
fensive to Jews, especially
Holocaust survivors.
But it has also angered
many Christians. A Belgian
priest, Abbe Bernard, accom-
panied two officials of the
French Section of the World
Jewish Congress on a visit to
the convent last week. They
brought with them a petition,
signed by 800 Belgian
Catholics, asking for the
removal of the convent from
the Auschwitz site.
"The nuns rejected the peti-
tion, and after 15 minutes of
discussion refused the delega-
tion to enter the convent," the
group reported to WJC head-
quarters here.
Unemployment
Up In Israel
Tel Aviv (JTA) — Israel's
unemployment rate rose
sharply over the first two
months of this year, reaching
a two- and-a-half year high of
around 8 percent of the work
force.
The last time unemploy-
ment peaked at this level was .
in June 1986.
The number of people
claiming unemployment
benefits, seasonally adjusted,
reached 33,000 on average for
the first two months of 1989,
up from the 32,400 mo,nthly
average for the last quarter of
1988.
The Central Bureau of
Statistics reported Sunday
that industrial output drop-
ped by 3 percent in 1988,
while the number of workers
employed in industry fell by
10,000 or 3.5 percent. The
largest reduction was felt in
the transport sector.
Simcha Assaf, head of the
Agriculture Center, told a
news conference Sunday that
some 5,000 farmers gave up
agriculture in 1988, as
average wages and incomes in
that sector dropped.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
5