UP FRONT

Jewish Ensemble Theatre Opens
First Season, $700,000 Campaign

Source: Jewish Family Service

JVS Needs More Space
• To Serve Soviet Jews

SUSAN GRANT

Staff Writer

W

ith the large influx
of Soviet refugees
coming to Detroit,
Jewish Vocational Service
needs more building space.
Last month it asked the
Jewish Historical Society of
Michigan, which rented an
office in the JVS Southfield
Road building, to move out
Nov. 1. When the society
moved in, said President
Adele Staller, it agreed to
move if JVS ever needed the
12-foot by 12-foot interior of-

fice. JVS has given the
group free storage space
while the society seeks new
quarters.
JVS Executive Director
Albert Ascher said while he
is sorry the building's only
tenant had to leave, JVS
needs the space because the
numbers of Soviet refugees
who use the agency's service
have tripled since January.
JVS Assistant Executive
Director Barbara Nurenberg
said the latest- figures show
that between Nov. 1, 1989,
and October, 1990, about

Continued on Page 14

The Jewish Ensemble
Theatre (JET) will open its
first full-scale season with a
production of The Man in the
Glass Booth this winter at the
Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield. The profes-
sional theater group will hold
its performances in the Aaron
DeRoy Theatre at the Center.
There will be 20 perfor-
mances of The Man in the
Glass Booth, beginning' with
previews on Jan. 31.
JET will also present The
Last Resort, a new play by
Detroit Kitty Dubin in
March, and Slow Dance on
the Killing Ground in June.
There will also be a festival of
new works presented on
Thursday evenings as staged
readings in May.
"We have a terrific amount
of activity under way," said
James M. August, president
of JET. "Our artistic director,
Evelyn Orbach; is putting
together the thousands of
details involved in getting a
theater season under way .. .
from hiring directors to
designing sets to arranging
casting sessions to supervis-
ing the ticket-selling cam-
paign."
Mary Lou Zieve, JET vice
president, is heading support
functions for JET. Dulcie
Rosenfeld and Dorothy Ger-

son are fundraising co-chairs.
They head a campaign to
raise $350,000 for the first
three years of the theater's
programming.
Other committees are being
formed to deal with public
relations, headed by Sheldon
Scott; marketing, headed by
Peggy Daitch; group sales,
Joyce Feurring; accounting,
Jonathon Peisner; house

There will be 20
performances of
"Man in the Glass
Booth," two other
plays and staged
readings.

management; production sup-
port; administration and
finance.
A volunteer rally is
scheduled for Dec. 4 at the
Aaron DeRoy Theatre.
Other members of the foun-
ding committee include
Bryant M. Frank, Babs Pro-
tetch, Irving Protetch,
Henrietta Hermelin-
Weinberg, Claire Kay and
Saul Wineman. Martha
Schlesinger of Lutz
Associates serves as a profes-
sional consultant to the
group.

The announcement is the
culmination of three years of
planning and work to create
JET. "Our commitment is to
performing works of par-
ticular interest to Jewish au-
diences, in English, as a way
of reaching out and enriching
the quality of Jewish life.
We're affiliated with Actor's
Equity, the national profes-
sional actors' union, and we
are dedicated to the highest
standards of performance ex-
cellence," Orbach stated.
JET is the culmination of
conversations between Mor-
ton Plotnick, executive direc-
tor of the JCC and the report
of the Jewish Welfare Federa-
tion's Commission on Identi-
ty and Affiliation which urg-
ed an increase in high-quality
cultural activities to reach
unaffiliated Jews and in-
crease the quality of Jewish
life.
Grants from the DeRoy
Cultural Arts Fund at United
Jewish Charities, the
Michigan Council for the Arts
and Oakland County Cul-
tural Council have provided
start-up funds for the
organization.
JET has established a
three-year budget of $700,000
which will be funded in part

Continued on Page 14

ROUND UT]

Academy regularly coins
_new words, usually new
forms of existing roots, to
cope with the changing
needs of modern society. But
many of them fail to catch
on.
For example, Israelis per-
sist in referring to super-
markets as "super" rather
than the- language acad-
emy's markol. Another word
frequently heard is bigdil, a
Hebraization of "big deal,"
used to express cynicism.

Bill Would
Aid Adoptees

Adoptees could receive in-
formation about life-
threatening genetic diseases
that have struck their
biological parents under
legislation passed by the
Michigan House.
Sponsored by State Rep.
David Honigman, R-West
Bloomfield, House Bill 4407
would require agencies that
place adopted children with
families to provide notice
about important medical or
genetic information.

Hebrew Is 'Bigdil'
For The Knesset

Jerusalem (JTA) — The
Knesset began its winter
session last week with a fes-
tive salute to the Hebrew
language.
President Chaim Herzog,
members of the Hebrew
Language Academy and
relatives of Eliezer Ben
Yehuda, the father of

Yitzhak Navon: Does he shop at
the super or the markol?

IPO Rehearses
Wagner Pieces

modern Hebrew, attended
the session, held in honor of
Hebrew Language Year,
which is being celebrated in
Israeli schools.
In a speech, Education
Minister Yitzhak Navon ex-
coriated the infiltration of
foreign words into the
Hebrew vernacular,
sometimes adapted by
Hebraized pronunciation.
The Hebrew Language

Tel Aviv (JTA) — Daniel
Barenboim, the Israel-born
concert pianist and conduc-
tor, recently took the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra on
a musical read through of
pieces by Richard Wagner.
Wagner is performed rare-
ly before audiences in Israel,
by the IPO or any other
group, because of his anti-
Semitism and his music's in-
fluence on Nazi ideology.

But Barenboim, an expert
on the German composer
and the conductor and
musical director of the
Berlin Symphony. Orchestra,
said Wagner's works were
important to the de-
velopment of modern music,
and any respectable or-
chestra needs to know
something of their history.

U.S. And Soviets
Study Nazi Crimes

The United States and the
Soviet Union recently con-
cluded a formal agreement
to cooperate in the in-
vestigation of Nazi war
crimes.
Attorney General Dick
Thornburgh, speaking last
before the Anti-Defamation
League in New York, called
the agreement a
breakthrough. He said con-
tacts already have been
made between the Justice
Department's Office of
Special Investigations and
the procurator general's of-
fice in Moscow.

The agreement, in the
form of a memorandum of
understanding, was signed
with the Soviet procurator
general during Thorn-
burgh's visit last month to
the Soviet Union.

Study Torah
In Russian

Shorashim, a project of
Agudath Israel of America,
has instituted a 24-hour
phone line providing in Rus-
sian a commentary on the
weekly Torah portion, along
with readings from Jewish
literature and wisdom.
Rabbi Aryeh Katzin,
known for his Torah broad-
casts over the Voice of
America, prepares the
recordings, which operate
continuously except on
Shabbat.
The number of the Rus-
sian-language phone line is
(718) 252-5100, or (718) 252-
5102.

Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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