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Wishing Our
Customers & Friends
The
Healthiest and
Happiest New Year!

NILVLASLiincEITF5

in the West Bloomfield Plaza

626 - 5511 • 626 - 1173
6672 Orchard Lake Rd.

REG. HOURS: M-F 9-5:30
TUES. & THURS. 9-8:30

ROCHELLE LIEBERMAN

and the staff of

Gateway. Travel

GATEWAY TRAVEL

wish all
our friends and clients
a happy and healthy New Year!

Julie Morgonroth • Nancy Fink • Lynne Starman • Wendy Danzig • Max
(Nancy) MacLeod • Mark Rubinstein • Connie Wolberg • Beth Feldman •
Sonny Cohn • Mille Chad • Marlene Kraft • Jeanette Shouneyia • Laura
Taylor • Ina Pitt • Gail Young • Joe LaMarra • Jean Sucher • Judy Chazen
• Sue Erlich • Steve Spitz • Deena Canvasser •

29100 Northwestern Hwy.
Southfield, Mich. 48034

353-8600

Hearty Wishes To Our
Customers and Friends
For A Very
Healthy and . Happy
NEW YEAR

JEWELRY DESIGN
& MFG. LTD.

Morris Bednarsh

Anthony Ferrari

APPLEGATE SQUARE

Northwestern & Inkster

356-7007

1

Dilemma

Continued from preceding page

ride, Abbie might never get
the chance to ride it again."
There are so many golf and
tennis tournaments schedul-
ed that the absence of Amy
Alcott or Corey Pavin would
not draw attention on the golf
circuit. But two years ago, two
Jewish tennis players, Aaron
Krickstein and Brad Gilbert,
competed for the champion-
ship in Queensland, Australia
on Yom Kippur.
Gilbert won and both
athletes were criticized by col-
umnists Gabe Cohen of the
National Jewish Post and
Opinion and Rabbi W. Gun-
ther Plaut of the Canadian
Jewish News.
Both writers contended
that the two were "heroes of
the Jewish community" — I
think most Jewish sports fans
would disagree, since neither
has been able to achieve the
star/hero plateau — and
should not have played. They
also commented:
"It could be what these two
see around them of obser-
vance or rather lack of it .. .
makes it easy for them to
justify their violation . . ."
But it's a far differenfset of
circumstances that caused
the two to play, as Dr. Herbert
Krickstein, Aaron's father

(and the son of a rabbi),
explained.
First, tennis players' tour-
nament schedules are made
months, even years, in ad-
vance. They are made by an
agent, who may not be Jewish
and who surely doesn't have
a Hebrew calendar in front of
him when he books the
athlete.

Second, there never can be c‘2
a guarantee that a tennis
player will advance to a
championship match which
may fall on Yom Kippur; ors-;
the player could expect that
the match would end before
sundown.

But, in 1990, what could
Gilbert and Krickstein do,
once they kept winning and
advancing to the champion- -
ship? Could they both forfeit?
Would that have been fair for
the tournament organizers?
Added Dr. Krickstein: "It's
easy to criticize but not so
easy to deal with. Religion is
not a big part of the lifestyle
of a professional athlete. They
aren't at home; they're
nomads. They aren't con-
scious of the holidays until
they draw near. What could
they have done? They already
were in Australia."E

I RELIGION

Yom Kippur Preparations
Involve Atonement

LISA SAMIN

Special to The Jewish. News

T

he evening before Yom
Kippur, Marie, a new
immigrant from Mos-
cow, took a walk around one
of Jerusalem's religious
neighborhoods to watch
preparations for the sacred
Day of Atonement.
Unfamiliar with many
Jewish customs, Marie was
lost for words. Men and
women were swinging live
chickens around their heads,
chanting something incom-
prehensible. Incredulous, she
turned the next corner, only
to see men and women swing-
ing bags of money around
their heads. "What kind of
country have I come to?" she
wondered aloud.
The ceremony was the
sacrificial kapparah (atone-
ment) ceremony (which
predates the Shulchan Aruch
— the basis for normative
halachic Judaism) which is
performed on the eve of Yom
Kippur, mostly by the Sephar-
dic and Chasidic com-
munities. Ashkenazi Jews
often use money in place of a
chicken.

After reciting a passage°
from Psalms and from the
Book of Job, a fowl (a rooster
for a man, a hen for a woman) <1
is taken and swung around
the head three times.
Simultaneously, with their
right hand on the fowl's head,
they recite three times: "This j
be my substitute, my
vicarious offering, my atone-
ment. This animal shall meet
death, but I shall find a long
and pleasant life of peace." I
The fowl is then
slaughtered and given to the
poor or to charity, as is the (
money used in the
Ashkenazic ceremony. A more
modern-day practice is to give
the animal's monetary value
to charity and to eat the
chicken for the Seudah
Hamafseket — the last meal
before the fast.
Rabbi Hanania Berzon, an
Orthodox rabbi who came to
Jerusalem in 1969 from New
York, says, "The concept of
sacrifice is a very powerful
one. In essence you are saying
that although I have sinned,
God has given me the oppor- 7_,
tunity to live, and I must
atone for my sins."
The fowl's slaughter, an in-
tegral part of the intense pro-