EDITORIAL Sharing The Load T he Allied Jewish Campaign completed a record-setting drive last night. Again this year, Detroit area Jews have given a record total — $25.5 million — to help those in need in this community, nationally, overseas and our brethren in Israel. Astounding as these figures are — an average of $291 from each man, woman and child in Detroit who claims any tie to the Jewish community - they also give pause because the numbers tell another story. A recent trend has shown that the Campaign and its dedicated volunteers are achieving record results from fewer and fewer donors. (See story, Page 15) In 1983, 18,440 individuals con- tributed to the Campaign. In 1988, 17,593 contributed and this year 17,000 Detroiters will share in the task. In earlier years we assumed these contributors were being drawn from a community of 70,000. But the recent population study found 96,000 Jews in the tri-county area, meaning that fewer than one in four Jewish adults will participate through their pocket- books in the work of the Jewish com- munity. Detroit Jewry's achievement this year is welcome, but it is not enough. Many local agencies will be held to sta- tus-quo budgets or be forced to cut back because of increased needs in Israel. And the Jewish Welfare Federation is starting a supplementary campaign, seeking an additional $5.5 million per year for the next three years, to help resettle the rising tide of Soviet Jews who are fleeing to Israel. Obviously, $25 million is not enough to meet all the needs. Even $30.5 million — adding the two cam- paigns together — will leave local agencies short and have national and overseas agencies crying for more. The time has come for the Jewish community to break away from old pat- terns and truly build community by reaching out. New contributors, and old, will demand more input into the decision-making process, and they may not be among the major giving categories. But reversing the shrinking numbers of contributors will build a new base for the community and change a trend that has ominous repercussions for the future. Purge Oberammergau T his is a world of terrible ironies. The avalanche of democracy that is sweeping away the detritus of communism has not swept away the hate for Jews that has been a staple for generations of certain Euro- peans and Russians. Indeed, the new mood seems to have only enhanced bigotry on which repressive govern- ments tried to keep the lid, or which they tried to channel into directions they determined best for their own ends. But anti-Semitism is not limited to countries emerging from the legacy of Marx, Lenin and Stalin. West Ger- many is often saluted for its commit- ment to democracy and for the distance it has traveled since the nightmare of Nazism. But a small village with a population of 4,700 in the southern part of West Germany has been the site of an anti-Semitic play for the last three centuries. Every ten years, the Bavarian town of Oberammergau hosts a passion play about the crucifixion of Jesus. The play, which will be perform- ed from May through September, asserts that Jews are burdened with an eternal curse — "a blood curse" — be- cause they were allegedly instrumen- 6 FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 1990 tal in the betrayal of Jesus. On stage, actors portraying Jews recite these lines from the Christian scriptures: "His blood be on us and our children." Twenty-five years after the Catholic Church's Vatican II con- ference rejected the idea that Jews were guilty of deicide, that charge is still made before 500,000 Christians who will attend the Oberammergau play's 100 performances this year. Just a few months after Jewish-Catholic re- lations were pushed to the brink by the furor over the convent at Auschwitz, a world-famous play in an otherwise ob- scure village perpetuates the tensions and fictions that have been the founda- tion of anti-Jewishness in the Chris- tian world for nearly two millennia. Until the play at Oberammergau is purged of its viciousness, until the nations — and the peoples — of the world censure the anti-Semitism which has long afflicted them, then the seeds of democracy swirling around the globe will be for naught. Democracy and freedom cannot be selective: for one person, or one people, to suffer because of their beliefs is to taint and discredit an entire movement that goes under the appellation of "democratic." LETTERS Negative Stories Do Not Belong Why does The Jewish News feel that it is necessary to publish negative articles about the metropolitan Detroit Jewish community? Last year, it was an article about a young mother who brought her son to Oak Park to see her "roots." Then it was the article "Please Don't Forget Me!" (March 9). This article infringed on the digni- ty and privacy of most of those mentioned and pictured. If Elizabeth Applebaum wanted to spend 42 hours at the Jewish Home for Aged, why didn't she note the gift shop and coffee shop run by the women's auxiliary as a fund-raising project, and a convenience to the staff, employees and visitors? Why didn't she mention that the therapy department at Bor- man Hall is one of the best in the metropolitan area? Why didn't she mention the people who come to entertain at the Home? Lenora E. Noler Southfield Clarifying `Observant' When The Jewish News referred to the Federation's new president, Mark Schlussel, as "observant Or- thodox," this seems to have generated some confusion among the readership. Must one be Orthodox to be "obser- vant"? Hone is "observant" is he necessarily Orthodox? The answer to this question lies in the clarification of that term. The Jewish News used the term as it is used in Orthodox circles. In the Orthodox Jewish community, "obser- vant" means three things: (1) one who keeps the Sabbath, (2) one who obeys the dietary laws, both in his home and elsewhere, and (3) one whose wife routinely uses the mikvah. Any Jew who fits this category is universally recognized as "observant" because it follows that if he keeps these three command- ments, there is a strong likelihood that he keeps all the rest. Such a Jew would probably consider himself an Orthodox Jew, a designation others would probably bestow upon him as well. Belief in God and the occa- sional visit to the temple gives one the status of "observer" rather than obser- vant. If one keeps a kosher home but eats "out," he cer- tainly deserves a high measure of respect as an observer, but he is among the non-observant. It's not to say that Judaism is an "all or nothing" religion. Every piece of Jewish living counts, every moment of the Sabbath spent in pure Sabbath holiness is worth its weight in gold. However, in the words of Rab- bi Joseph Soloveitchik, the spiritual dean of Yeshiva University, only one who practices an "unconditional commitment" to Torah and mitzvot is an "observant" Jew. Your applying this term to Mark Schlussel was certain- ly appropriate. Rabbi Jack Goldman West Bloomfield `Strong-Arm' Tactics Will Not Work I am strongly opposed to the guilt-producing, "strong-arm" and manipulation tactics Phyllis Karas advocated in "A Mother Worries" (March 2), to ensure that Jewish sons and Continued on Page 10