EDITORIAL
Silent On Southfield
There is a significant lack of Jewish
leadership in Southfield.
We're not talking about leaders who
happen to be Jewish, for there are many on
the city council, the board of education and
other local commissions and agencies.
Rather, we are talking about an absence of
leadership on issues which impact
Southfield's Jewish community.
According to the Jewish Welfare Federa-
tion's recently released demographic
study, approximately 27,500 Jews reside in
Southfield, more than one-third of the
city's total population. Southfield has been
the center of the area's 95,000-strong Jew-
ish community. But it won't be if Jewish
leadership there doesn't emerge soon.
The migration of families with school-
aged children to West Bloomfield, Farm-
ington Hills and other points north and
west continues, largely on the presumption
that the quality of public schools is supe-
rior to what they can receive in Southfield.
As persons from different racial and ethnic
backgrounds move into predominantly
Jewish neighborhoods, there is often con-
cern and flight rather than tolerance and
community building. And when the Jewish
Welfare Federation announces that it will
hop-scotch over Southfield and move its
headquarters from downtown Detroit to
Farmington Hills, despite all of its pro-
nouncements that it is ready to take a
stand in Southfield and help preserve Jew-
ish communal life there, there is no Jewish
leadership to question it.
It's time for Southfield's real Jewish
communal leaders to emerge, for the rabbis
of Shaarey Zedek, Young Israel, Beth
Achim, Beth Jacob-Mogain Abraham, Beth
Tefilo Emanuel Tikvah, Shomrey Emunah,
Akiva Hebrew Day School and Yeshiva
Beth Yehudah, as well as other rabbis and
synagogue lay leadership to speak up for
Jewish life — and its preservation — in
Southfield.
The silence is deafening.
Vatican Courage
With the onset of Rosh Hashanah next
Wednesday evening, the Ten Days of
Repentance will begin. Jews around the
globe will ask for teshuvah, or repentance.
This is the expected behavior of Jews at
this time of the year. But it is not expected
that a Catholic archbishop from Australia,
speaking on behalf of the Vatican, would
also ask for teshuvah. Yet, that is what
happened at a high-level meeting of Jews
and Catholics in Prague last week when
Archbishop Edward Cassidy said "that an-
ti-Semitism has found a place in Christian
thought and practice calls for an act of
teshuvah and of reconciliation on our part
The archbishop was speaking to the
International Catholic-Jewish Liaison
Committee, a body composed of represent-
atives from four Jewish organizations and
the Holy See. From all accounts, discus-
sions at the four-day meeting about Chris-
tian responsibility for the Holocaust were
extraordinarily frank. More than the ar-
chbishop's call for repentance transpired.
Catholic delegates also condemned anti-
Semitism as "a sin against God and hu-
manity" and declared that "one cannot be
authentically Christian and engage in an-
ti-Semitism."
It is heartening that the Vatican is mak-
ing explicit what was implicit in Nostra
Aetate, the major 1965 document reversing
almost two millennia of church doctrine
regarding Jews' alleged complicity in the
death of Jesus. Now, in effect, the Vatican
is saying to its flock that anti-Semitism is
anti-Christian.
There are still major differences between
the Church and Jews, particularly regar-
ding the State of Israel, which the Vatican
does not recognize formally. But the Jew-
ish community should take note of the
major steps the Church has taken in
recognizing its responsibility for past
tragedies and its poignant plea for
teshuvah.
The New UN
Forty-five years after it was created, the
United Nations is beginning to do its job
properly.
For many years the U.N. was a sick joke,
spending more of its time criticizing tiny
Israel than dealing with countless other
world problems. It was at best ineffectual,
at worst dangerous.
One of its darkest moments came when,
in May 1967, the U.N. agreed to Egyptian
President Nasser's demand that it remove
its peacekeeping force from the Suez, thus
precipitating the Six-Day War. Another
low point was the passage of the 1975
resolution equating Zionism with racism.
But during the current Persian Gulf
6
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1990
crisis, the U.N. has shown a startling
degree of courage and unanimity as the
nations of the world have rallied together
to isolate Iraq for its takeover of Kuwait.
The key, of course, is the recent rap-
prochement between the United States and
the Soviet Union,
The question is whether the U.N. can
maintain its resolve, or will it soon revert
to its cowardly ways. We are not naive
enough to believe that Israel will soon
become the darling of the United Nations.
But as long as the member nations realize
that any resolution of the current crisis
that allows Saddam Hussein to fight an-
other day is a fatal error, there is hope.
OPINION
Investment In Emigres
To Pay Big Dividends
JULIAN L. SIMON
I
n the past two decades,
social scientists have
created an impressive
body of empirical knowledge
about immigration. The
results — for Israel, as well as
for the United States, Canada
and Australia — refuse the
common belief that im-
migrants injure existing
residents economically.
The general conclusion for
all these countries is that im-
migrants raise natives' stan-
dard of living, rather than
lower it. They contribute
more in taxes than the cost of
the welfare services they use,
and they reduce the burden of
public support. Immigrants
improve productivity and
competitiveness with their in-
ventiveness. They do not
displace natives from jobs.
Yes, the situation in Israel
is a bit different than in other
countries. Immigrants are a
burden to Israel in that they
get special financial and
material assistance. And the
volume of present immigra-
tion is large relative to the
size of the population, mak-
ing adjustment more difficult,
though no more difficult than
that of West Germany now or
after World War II, or of Israel
after 1948. On the benefit
side, Israel's special security
needs make additional per-
sons particularly valuable.
The available data are
mostly for the immigrants
Julian L. Simon is professor of
business administration at the
University of Maryland, and
author of "The Economic Con-
sequences of Immigration."
who came in the 1970s. But
there is no reason to think
that the picture is different
now, because this is exactly
the same picture seen in
other countries. The results of
the research are compared to
the Jewish Israeli population.
• The Soviet immigrants
bring high levels of work
skills. Sixty-one percent of
1970s immigrant employees
had more than 13 years of
schooling, compared to only
26 percent of Jewish Israeli
employees. Only 13 percent
had less than eight years of
The "rate of
return" on the
investment is a
staggering 80
percent annually.
schooling, compared to 29 per-
cent of the Israeli residents.
The current immigration is
even more favorable from the
standpoint of education and
skill, according to
preliminary data from those
who arrived in 1989. An in-
credible one-third of all those
of working ages are
engineers, with perhaps
another 10 percent physicians
and other medical workers.
This is a wealth of talent
that any country would
treasure because of its ex-
traordinary potential to in-
crease productivity and speed
economic advance.
• Immigrants do not cause
native unemployment, even
among low-paid and minority
groups. A spate of recent
studies in the United States,