EDITORIAL
C_J
Center Offers A Bridge
On, Sunday, Aug. 30, Congregation
Shaarey Zedek will unveil its Eugene and
Marcia Applebaum Beth Hayeled Building
and Jewish Parenting Center to the com-
munity.
With its opening, Congregation Shaarey
Zedek is demonstrating a concern it has for
the 1990s Jewish family. Many area con-
gregations have highly committed pro-
grams dedicated to the solidification of the
Jewish family. Here, Shaarey Zedek is
seizing a unique opportunity. Its facility
will offer a bridge between its synagogue,
and its nursery school. That bridge is the
Parenting Center.
With full recognition that parents of the
1990s might be missing the resources the
extended Jewish family of the past once
offered, programs that range from learning
Hebrew to effective parenting to grand-
parenting will be offered. Busy parents
who don't know how to observe the
Sabbath or the real significance behind a
child's bar or bat mitzvah, will be able to
learn. The Center will even make kosher
Sabbath meals available.
There are perhaps a million and one
negative reasons why this community
needs such a facility, from the staggering
rate of intermarriage to generations lost to
assimilation. But the mood of the Shaarey
Zedek staff is to accentuate the positive,
the learning that can take a family to their
next most comfortable level of Jewish
growth.
And it's this positive approach to Jewish
life that the entire community looks for-
ward to for generations to come.
AIPAC As Big Brother
The American Israel Public Affairs
Committee has a mandate to lobby on
Capitol Hill for pro-Israel legislation and to
strengthen U.S.-Israel ties. When it does
its job well, as it often does, that makes us
proud. But when AIPAC involves itself
with the internal workings of the Jewish
community — specifically the Jewish press
— that makes us apprehensive.
The issue at hand, as reported in these
pages several weeks ago, concerns a top
AIPAC official's role in seeking to change
the editorial point of view of the Washing-
ton Jewish Week, which he deemed to be
too liberal.
Briefly, Andrew Silow Carroll, the then
managing editor of the newspaper, spoke
at a picnic sponsored by a coalition of
Washington-area "progressive" or
"alternative" Jewish groups in May 1991.
A former AIPAC intern was there and
wrote up a memo, which he submitted to
AIPAC, describing Mr. Carroll's comments
as sympathetic with the views of his au-
dience.
That memo was later shared by Steve
Rosen, AIPAC's policy director, with mem-
bers of the board of the Washington Jewish
Week. Soon after, Mr. Carroll was demoted
and subsequently resigned this past June.
The publisher of the Washington Jewish
Week said his decision had nothing to do
with the memo; Mr. Carroll's supporters
maintain that the editor was the victim of
a Jewish smear campaign.
Whether or not the memo was responsi-
ble directly for Mr. Carroll's leaving is not
our main concern. Rather, it is Mr. Rosen's
admitted interest in changing the policy of
the Washington Jewish Week, which he felt
had become "the captive of an ideological
faction that was to the left of the Jewish
mainstream." That is why he said he
shared the 13-line, unsubstantiated memo
with members of the board of the news-
paper.
Mr. Rosen said that his intent was to
change the newspaper's editorial policy,
not its personnel. "Keeping the paper in
the hands of the 'alternative' crowd was
unhealthy," he said.
We find such thinking disturbing and far
removed from the purview of AIPAC,
which, ironically, has been criticized by
Israeli government officials in recent days
for having aligned itself too closely in re-
cent years with the policies of the right-of-
center Likud government of Yitzhak
Shamir.
Now, to keep pace with the new govern-
ment in Jerusalem, AIPAC is scrambling
back toward the center. All of which is fine
in a system that reflects democracy and di-
versity. That is precisely why AIPAC
should respect the independence and diver-
sity of the Jewish press.
It's one thing for the organization to keep
files on people and organizations; the key
question is what it does with such files. Mr.
Rosen's actions in the Andrew Carroll
episode, at least, were out of line.
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LETTERS
Jews Must Speak
Against Genocide
I am writing in response to
the editorial by Elizabeth Ap-
plebaum, "Spare Me Com-
parisons." (Aug. 21).
There can be no question
that the Holocaust was a uni-
que event, and to equate
other acts of brutality — even
when they involve genocide —
with the Holocaust is to
trivialize that terrible period
of history. However, I have
nowhere seen a statement
that the atrocities in Bosnia-
Herzegovina are equated
with those of the Holocuast,
except in Ms. Applebaum's
column.
As Jews, we bear particular
responsibility to stop
genocide wherever it occurs,
even if we are not (this time)
the ones in the camps and
even if the number of people
killed does not add up to 6
million.
Ms. Applebaum's editorial
equates genocide and
systematic extermination
with the use of gas chambers.
Unfortunately, mankind has
developed many techniques
for mass murder, gas
chambers being only one of
them. The absence of gas
chambers in the Serbian
camps certainly should not
lead one to conclude that
systematic extermination of
Muslims and Croats could not
take place there.
I feel compelled to point out
an historical inaccuracy in
the above-mentioned
editorial, in which was writ-
ten "there was no history of
German-Jewish conflict when
World War II broke out." Ger-
man anti-Semitism existed
long before World War II.
Are the camps, the "ethnic
cleansing" of territory, the
torture and the killing to be
equated with the Holocaust?
No. Is systematic extermina-
J
tion of ethnic groups (read:
genocide) occurring? It would
appear so. So why is it possi-
ble to count on one hand the
individuals in the Detroi
Jewish community who have_
forcefully spoken out on thig
issue? Is it because this time
we are not the ones behind
the barbed wire?
David A. Loeffler
Southfield
CHAIM Condemn -
'Ethnic Cleansing'
C.H.A.I.M., Children of
Holocaust-Survivors ASSOCiE.;,--
tion In Michigan, strongly
condemns the persecution;
and the atrocities reportedly
being committed by Serbia ,
against the Muslim and Croa-
tian peoples of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. The brutal,-
policy of "ethnic cleansing"
now taking place evokes in uEJ
memories of the Nazi policy of
genocide against the Jewisi
people during the Holocaust.
Fifty years ago, the world
stood silent as Nazi death
camps operated. Had nations
vigorously protested and not-,
been silent about the
atrocities being committed by
Nazi Germany, perhaps 6
million civilian Jews would
not have lost their lives.
As a matter of conscience,
we protest and we urge others
to protest the horrors now
taking place in 1992. We an,
peal to our nation's leaders to
take appropriate actions to do
whatever is possible to pre-
vent the further losses of life
We urge international inspec-
tions of Serbian prison campsr-
and continued support for ef-
forts to supply humanitaridii
aid to the refugees.
Charles Silow
President C.H.A.I.M.
Farmington Hills