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SINGLE LIFE
MetroHillel
PRE-PURIM SCUBA DIVERS'
SCAVENGER HUNT*
Saturday, February 2nd
Beginning at
8:07 p.m.
at
Post-Grad Jewish Programming
Shows Big Growth In Ann Arbor
WAKEFIELD APARTMENTS
CLUB HOUSE
Southfield
*BLACK TIE SCUBA GEAR IS OPTIONAL
R.S.V.P.
LISA SANDLER
577-3459
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370-4257
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Specializing in
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"Helping You Get The. Most
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• Bar/Bat Mitzvahs
• Birthday Parties
• Weddings
• Anniversaries
673-5460
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569-6550
Registration Open For All Classes!
Directed by International Dancer-Choreographer Barry Douglas
Offering . Programs In
Ballet, Tap, Jazi,•Tahltian, Hawaiian, Pre-School
Creative Movement and Ballroom Dancing!
Also Offering,:
Street Dancing and Lambadolg
CLASSES OFFERED FOR I
ALL AGES AND ALL LEVELS
CALL HOW 681-4101
3080 Orchard Lake Road, Keego Harbor
92
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1991
RICHARD PEARL
Staff Writer
W
hen it comes to pro-
viding regular pro-
gramming for its
post-graduate Jewish singles
population, Ann Arbor is
like the old cigarette com-
mercial.
They've come a long way,
baby.
. And the impetus for
growth has come both from
the Jewish professionals and
laypeople.
Dan Rosen says when he
moved to Ann Arbor from St.
Louis nearly eight years ago,
"it didn't seem like anything
existed" socially for post-
graduate Jewish single
adults.
"You'd meet people on the
street and if it happened
they had the same
background — Jewish
background — as you, it was
sheer luck," says Mr. Rosen,
a photographer.
For a young Jewish profes-
sional beginning a career in
a university community
with a sizeable Jewish
graduate population, that
wasn't too encouraging.
Not that there wasn't
anything to do in Ann Arbor.
As Nina Gelman, 27-year-
old editor of the Washtenaw
Jewish News, puts it,
"There's more than enough
to do here."
With a world-class univer-
sity and its various educa-
tional and cultural programs
and the international diver-
sity of its faculty and stu-
dent body, plus the variety of
restaurants and bars and
special-interest clubs such as
the Ann Arbor Ski Club, the
community would seem a
cornucopia of activities. The
problem was, as Mr. Rosen,
Ms. Gelman and others saw
it, the undergraduates — in
their case, the Jewish
undergraduates — seemed to
have the corner on the cor-
nucopia.
Not only could the
undergrads meet in classes
or in any of the variety of
programs, concerts and
clubs, they also had. the pop-
ular B'nai B'rith Hillel
Foundation on campus.
But, for the post-graduate
set, there was "nothing
specifically Jewish set up for
meeting each other so-
cially," says Ms. Gelman, a
native of Ann Arbor who
returned after graduating
from Oberlin College in Ohio
about six years ago. Since
Nina Gelman:
Pushed for singles group.
then, however, the situation
has improved considerably.
The city now boasts three
Jewish singles organizations
— Hillel's Grads and Young
Professionals group and the
Washtenaw County Jewish
Community Center's Outing
Club, whose memberships
overlap somewhat, and JCC
Singles groups — to serve
the three Jewish groups
previously ignored: the post-
grads, the young profes-
sional who might have earn-
ed a degree elsewhere and
even the "post-post-".
graduate.
The Grads/Young Profes-
sionals is an academic-year,
U-M-based Hillel group for
both singles and couples in
their 20s and 30s while the
Outing Club, which is not af-
filiated with the university,
runs year-round and has
many members in the same
age group as Hillel's, but
who have no direct connec-
tion with the university.
The JCC Singles, on the
other hand, was created
from the former Ann Arbor
Jewish Singles/Single
Parent Network and is for
single adults age 40 and up
who are divorced, widowed
or simply unmarried.
The groups generally coor-
dinate activities so as to
avoid scheduling conflicts.
Michelle Blumenberg,
Hillel program director, says
the Grads group has a mail-
ing list of approximately
700, split about 50-50 bet-
ween grad students and non-
students, the latter in-
cluding those beginning pro-
fessional careers in the
community. She "guess-
timates" there are about
3,000 in Ann Arbor and says
there is a constant turnover
in participants.
She created the Grads pro-
gram in 1986 from bits and
pieces of programming aim-
ed at the graduate commun-
ity because "most program-
ming at Hillel was geared to
the undergraduates."
The program provides a
social atmosphere for both
singles and young marrieds
and draws from Ann Arbor
as well as Detroit, its
suburbs and the Toledo area,
she says.
"Young adults don't usual-
ly connect until they have
children and join a temple or
synagogue," says Ms.
Blumenfeld, who is original-
ly from Southfield. "It's like
a young-adult division of a
Jewish federation, but
there's no fundraising," she
says.
Typical programs include
a monthly "veggie" Shabbat
potluck dinner with a
speaker, usually held at the
U-M Lawyers Club. Other
events include a grad-
student open house, a pic-
nic/barbecue and Sunday
brunches. A coffee house is
being planned.
The push for a non-
university Jewish singles
organization was begun six
years ago by Ms. Gelman be-
cause she found it "extreme-
ly hard to meet Jewish peo-
ple in the 21-35 age group
who were not undergrads."
And she wanted more
organized activities for the
singles.
Steve Russman, a
Southfield native and 1986
U-M graduate who has lived
in Ann Arbor since his
undergrad days, joined with
Ms. Gelman in the effort.
Mr. Russman, noting the
population is transient, says
he lost many friends through
graduation. He also found
Ann Arbor to be "kind of cli-
que-y — a lot of people grow
up and stay here."
The result was the JCC
Outing Club, which draws
from some of the same
population as the
Grads/Young Professionals
but is mostly a never-
married group. It has its own
monthly shomer Shabbat
potluck, occasional melavah
malkah on Saturday nights,
and a variety of other
events, including canoeing,
ski trips, happy hours,
movie-marathons with
potluck dinners, bowling
events, rollerskating and
dinners at restaurants.
Ms. Gelman says about
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