!LOCAL NEWS I At BUDMAN'S Remodeling is BEAUTIFUL We can create a room to fit your most demanding personal needs. Refugee Misconceptions Heard By JCCouncil ENERGY EFFICIENT, RICHARD PEARL Staff Writer Add a dramatic difference to almost any room in the house. S HIGH QUALITY We custom make all windows to your specifications. WE ALSO INSTALL: • Roofing & Siding • Additions & Dormers • Garage Doors • Kitchen Remodeling • Bathroom Remodeling • Recreation Rooms • Awnings & Enclosures • Skylights • Insulated Replacement Windows & Doors •;••••• ■ 111.1111111 Quality Home Improvements Since 1907 . 16983 West 10 Mile Road Southfield 559.6364 Authorized Dealer Tables • Desks Wall Units Bedrooms Dining Rooms For Appt. Call 14 10 Years Experience & Expertise in the Design of Affordable Laminate, Lucite & Wood Furniture Muriel Wetsman FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1989 661.3838 j oviet Jews believe Is- rael is a desert with 140-degree temperatures and gunfights in the streets, and they're not too sure you can walk safely in American cities either. Such opinions were part of a wide-ranging picture of world Jewry presented during the Detroit Jewish Communi- ty Council's annual delegate assembly last week-. Amir Shaviv, public infor- mation director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in New York, discussed Soviet and Ethiopian Jews and JDC's efforts to help Jews overseas. Shaviv, a former Israeli television newscaster, was a last-minute substitute for Michael Schneider, JDC ex- ecutive vice president, who stayed in New York to steer the agency through a cash crisis. Shaviv told the Council that Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia have strong Jewish communities — 80,000 Jews live in Hungary today — but that Poland has only 5-6,000 Jews, mostly elderly. However, he said, Polish Jewish youth, in many cases from mixed marriages, are interested in bar mitzvah and wear chais and magen davids. He said many Soviet Jews "are eager to have Jewish lives, and we must grasp the opportunity and create an ongoing atmosphere for Jewish education in these countries. "Years of Soviet propagan- da have ruined the image of Israel for Soviet Jews. They think it's a desert with 140-degree temperatures, that there's shooting in the streets and rampant unemployment. To them, it's a place that no sane Jew would like to go," said Shaviv. He described Soviet Jews coming to the transmigration point in Ladispoli, Italy, as "a people who come with their suitcases wrapped with rope. They have left behind whatever security they had in the Soviet Union for a place they don't understand. We have to realize how frighten- ing it is for them, what a terrible state of mind they are in, waiting to get to the United States. "In our American civics classes in Ladispoli, the Soviet Jews ask if you get mugged all the time in American cities. They want to know if you get interviewed for a job, do you have to take the job? Is it safe to walk in the streets? These are elementary questions to us, but not to them," said Shaviv. He said tzedakah is "a very hard notion to teach to Soviet Jews" because they think "there's something behind it, you don't just do things for people like that. They keep asking, 'Why do you keep us here?' They are suspicious of all agencies." He said the JDC carefully cooperates with the Ethio- pian government, even set- ting up medical clinics far from Jewish settlements, which results in Jewish mothers carrying their children for miles. He said the agency is the Ethiopian Jews' lifeline and "if the JDC is ex- pelled, there will be no link with the Jews there." He said Ethiopian mothers, unfamiliar with modern medicine, have to be watched lest they give their children entire prescriptions at once. Asked by Henry Morgens- tein of West Bloomfield if there has been any adverse comments in the Soviet press about the United States' pro- blems in admitting Soviet Jews, Shaviv said, "lb the best of our knowledge, there has been no attempt to capitalize on this." Jerry Kaufman of Bloom- field Hills asked if anyone is talking with the U.S. govern- ment to open the bottleneck that is preventing Soviet Jews from entering the country. Shaviv said Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.) and other politicians had introduced legislation toward that end, and that the Council of Jewish Federations also is working on the problem in Washington. 4 -o 4 4 -4 ❑ Correction Our Page 1 story last week incorrectly said the Jewish Welfare Federation was using United Jewish Charities funds for a loan to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In fact, Federation is using Allied Jewish Campaign monies to advance a $1 million gift to JDC. Federa- tion has committed $2.5 million to JDC from a special "Passage to Freedom" cam- paign for Soviet Jewry which will begin April 12. .•4 -4 4