OPINION

MARVIN GOLDMAN

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his year, Yavneh Acad-
emy, Detroit's Reform
Jewish day school, had
16 enrolled. Five of the 16
were returning Soviet Jewish
immigrants who were
students of Yavneh last year,
with no tuition payment.
At our final board meeting,
it was reluctantly decided
that the number of currently
enrolled students, with only
11 paying, was not enough to
even closely cover the cost of
running the school for a third
year, if we were to continue
the first-class education we
had provided in our previous
two years.
We could have opted to
hang on for another month in
the hope that we would enroll
more students in July and
August, but we decided this
would be unfair to our
teachers, whom we felt should
have time to find other jobs.
It was always our hope that
the Reform Jewish communi-
ty would realize the excellent
opportunity that Yavneh of-
fered in educating their
children — not only to become
more cognizant of Jewish

Marvin Goldman was a
major benefactor of Yavneh,
and a vice president of the
school.

ideals and heritage but, in ad-
dition, to get a much better
secular education than they
would receive in the crowded
public school system.
Any of the parents of the
children we educated in the
last two years will only speak
in glowing terms of the pro-
gress and enjoyment their
children had at Yavneh.
Why did we fail? I can only
give you my own thoughts
about this:
• Most of • the Reform
Jewish day shcools in the
United States have been

A lack of support
in many forms
caused the school
to close.

started in their own temples,
by their own temples. We at-
tempted to make Yavneh a
community school, hoping to
attract students from all of
the reform congregations.
This might have been our big-
gest mistake.
• Although in the past few
months we have had tremen-
dous support from Rabbis
Loss and Yedwab of Temple
Israel, Rabbis Polish and
Cook of Temple Beth El, Rab-
bi Steinger of Ibmple Emanu-
El, and Rabbi Roman of rIbm-
ple Kol Ami, I have to be

honest and say that in the
early stages, they were not
too helpful in recruiting.
I realize that each rabbi is,
and should be, mainly com-
mitted to the numerous ac-
tivities of his own congrega-
tion and is busy all the time.
It is Yavneh's fault that we
did not urge them enough for
more help. This might have
made a difference.
When we did come to them
a few months ago, they
responded with vigor. Realiz-
ing that we were in trouble,
they made phone calls, one-
on-one meetings with pro-
spective parents, letters, ar-
ticles in their bulletins, etc.,
but again it was too late.
• We never did get the
financial help we needed from
the Reform Jewish popula-
tion. Maybe it. was the
economic times, but outside of
our own officers and board
members, and a handful of
others, despite numerous re-
quests and fund-raising
meetings, little financial help
was given.
If it were not for the
generous help we received
from the Jewish Welfare
Federation, who realized how
important a Reform Jewish
day school can be to future
generations, we could not
have even enjoyed the two
years we did. I have come to

Photo by Glenn Triest

Post Mortem For Yavneh,
The Reform Jewish Day School

Yavneh student Steven Morse.

believe that a Jewish educa-
tion is not as important to a
Reform parent as it is to the
Conservative and Orthodox
parents.
• I don't think that we got
enough support from The
Jewish News during our first
two years. Although we
bought numerous ads about
Yavneh, the very few articles
that The Jewish News did
write were not very encourag-
ing for our school. It was on-
ly last month that two ar-
ticles, beautiful and helpful,
including a great editorial,
were in the paper.
Can we blame the officers
and board of Yavneh for its
failure? Maybe.

I have been on many boards
for various Jewish causes dur-
ing the past 30 years and can
only say this:
Every officer and board
member did their very best to
make Yavneh a first-class
school. Their enthusiasm,
dedication and hard work
were outstanding. Margaret
Eichner, our school director,
gave three years of her life to
make this school exceptional
and we think it was.
Although we are closing at
this time, I am sure that
someday a community Re-
form Jewish day school will
again emerge and the Reform
Jewish society can only
benefit. ❑

Facing Four More Years Of Shamir's Status Quo

HIRSH GOODMAN

Special to The Jewish News

S

hould Israeli elections
be held soon — or even
not•s° soon — they will
be like the sound of one hand
clapping.
The Likud could field a
chimpanzee to head its list
and would win hands down.
There is no Labor Party;
there is no opposition. The
well-intentioned parties on
the left are politically impo-
tent, have no power and can
bring about no change.
The choices we face are
either not to vote, throw
away our vote or, if Shas, the
religious party, is still in
business, sell it.
There are going to be early
elections. Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir decided on
this months ago. He will not
overtly initiate them, but

Hirsh Goodman is editor in
chief of the Jerusalem Report,
from which this piece is
reprinted.

will allow one of his coalition
partners to precipitate a
crisis.
Shas has many good
reasons for wanting an elec-
tion before November 1992,
the scheduled date. Mr.
Shamir wants to avoid a
leadership battle at the
Likud convention that, by
law, has to be convened
before the end of February
1992. With elections immi-
nent he has good reason to
expect that the party will
rally around him, thus blun-
ting a challenge from either
Ariel Sharon or David Levy.
He also believes that the
sooner elections are held the
less of an issue his age, now
75, will be. The same goes
for the government's failure
to absorb the hundreds of
thousands of immigrants
this country has been bless-
ed with this past year.
From Mr. Shamir's point
of view, however, the main
incentive for engineering an
early election is that Shimon
Peres will still be at the head

of the Labor Party; the party
will have no agenda and no
message and will continue to
be consumed by the internal
bickering, backbiting and
lack of direction that has
characterized it for the past
decade.
Mr. Shamir is not the man
to translate a solid majority

Mr. Shamir is not
the man to
translate a solid
majority in the
Knesset into
political reform or
diplomatic
movement.

in the Knesset into political
reform or diplomatic move-
ment. He is not a man of bold
action or even his word, as
President George Bush and
Secretary of State James
Baker have come to realize
these past years. He is a man
with tenacity who uses his

strength to entrench himself
and his government, not
move forward. He has his
heels so deeply dug into the
ground that his feet have
turned to clay.
So there it is: an early
election for more of the same
— another four years with a
myopic prime minister, an
impotent opposition and a
string of lost opportunities
along the way. The answer
to the intifada will be found
in military and punitive, not
diplomatic, means. The an-
swer to any peace process
will be fudged at best. The
solid young generation of
leadership in both major
parties will be stymied for
yet another four years,
become even more disillu-
sioned and, at the same
time, more beholden to the
system they were once so de-
termined to change.
Sad, but true. That is the
unfortunate prognosis for
the next four or five years.
They say that a country gets
the government it deserves.

In this case, however, it is
probably the opposition it
deserves.
Shimon Peres and Yitzhak
Rabin make Yitzhak Shamir
look vibrant by comparison;
they make Mr. Shamir's
myopia look long-sighted.
These two men, Mr. Peres
and Mr. Rabin, have held
onto the reins of power to the
point where the horse is now
dead. The time has come to
change the team and steer in
new directions; articulate a
message, not continue to
moan and groan about the
ills of the other side.
At 43, it is time this coun-
try came out of the desert
and into the promised land.
We have everything going
for us except real leadership
— the leadership that knows
how to translate strength
and opportunity into advan-
tage, to move forward while
enjoying a consensus among
the people, to not only listen,
but speak as well. ❑

Copyright, The Jerusalem Report
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