Start a "Lebidik" Year with a Zemer,"
a "Tantz" and a "Lach"...
KLEZMER COMES TO BETH ACHIM
r)
Congregation Beth Achim is proud to present THE ETHNIC
CONNECTION...a world-renowned klezmer band. Their repertoire
includes all the old Yiddish and Hebrew favorites. Whether you
understand the words or not, this is music at its spirited
best...music the whole family will enjoy.
So come "zing" with us, "Tantz" and "Iach"...
November 1, 1992 3:00 p.m.
a. Congregation Beth Achim
21100 W. 12 Mile Rd., Southfield
Ic
$5.00 Members •
$7.00 Non-Members
$3.00 Students/Children
Call for tickets and information...352-8670
A portion of the proceeds to benefit the Hebrew School .
Midnight Madness
DON'T CRACK
UNDER PRESSURE
Friday, Oct. 23rd 7 P.111.-1 2 a.m.
9teefteAtift9 Safieft941
Greg
SHOES
Orchard Mall
West Bloomfield
851-5566
.
DESIGN
Save Up To 300 LL1iiPLANS
On Health Insurance includ
by Notional Group Marketing
"
EP'
TAG-Heuer
SWISS MADE SINCE 1860.
es:
Outpatient
Up To $10 Million in Catastrophic Protection
"We Design A Plan To Fit Your Needs"
■ Individuals ■ Families ■ Small Businesses ■ Self Employed
For A FREE QUOTE Call Tommy Levine
Doctor
Services
Dental
Optical
Prescriptions
788-1577 or
1-800-829-6052
32940 Middlebelt Rd.,
In the Broadway Plaza
PHONE: 855-1730
Mon: Fri. 10-6, Thurs. 10-7:30, Sat. 10-5
CLASSIFIED
GET RESULTS!
Call The Jewish News
*Documented
Plans underwritten by Pioneer Life Insurance Co., Rockford IL Certain /irritations and exclusions may opply.
rt..4._
01..
JEWELERS
ages on file.
354-5959
MAKING ROOM/page 69
the immigrants' ideas; he
found Israelis with business
experience to handle the
management end of things,
and he started a separate
company to seek venture
capital.
Mr. Branover also joined
with the Jewish Agency to
establish the Negev Im-
migrant Employment Cen-
ter to collect immigrant sci-
entists' resumes and list
both their existing patents
and their proposals for new
projects. His object: to
match the scientists with ex-
isting enterprises. To train
the immigrants in market-
ing, business administra-
tion, and Hebrew, Mr.
Branover established the
Ofakim Technology Center,
which Ben Gurion Universi-
ty supports by offering fac-
ulty-level access to its
libraries and laboratories.
Soon Israel's other uni-
versities modeled additional
centers after Mr.
Branover's. Nicknamed
"incubators," they establish
companies in which univer-
sity, immigrant scientist,
and investor all have a
share. More than two dozen
current commercial projects
(most of them in energy, like
Mr. Branover's own work)
stem from Mr. Branover's
efforts alone.
Such projects are not
without a hitch: indepen-
dence and the entrepreneur-
ial spirit do not come easily
to the Russians. Aryeh
Levenshtein, who heads the
Technion incubator, says
that initially when he used
to order tea with the Rus-
sians, he found that all of
them ordered tea, too; when
he ordered coffee, all of them
ordered coffee.
Partly to counter the kind
of conformism that could
undermine success in the
rough-and-tumble of the
business world, the Tech-
nion, the Hebrew Universi-
ty, and Tel Aviv University
have all begun to offer busi-
ness and management
courses for immigrant scien-
tists.
In recent years Israeli
high schools have suffered
from a shortage of science
teachers, so the schools of
education of several of the
universities have begun of-
fering hundreds of engineers
and scientists who might
have been unemployable in
their fields retraining as
high school teachers of phys-
ics, math, chemistry, and
technology.
The Hebrew, Bar Ilan, and
Haifa universities are each
retraining about 30 scien-
tists as social workers, too
— a field of which Russians
previously "had no con-
Prof. Rabinovich:
"Exploding with new talent."
cept," according to Chaim
Granot, director of Bar Il-
an's School of Social Work.
The goal of the two-year
programs: to send the im-
migrants back to their
communities to work with
others who are having trou-
ble adjusting to life in their
new society.
Because throughout Isra-
el's history of immigration
there has never been an in-
flux of people so ignorant of
Judaism or of Zionist
aspirations, the most effec-
tive of the immigrant pro-
grams over the long term
may perhaps be Bar Ilan's.
There, in addition to taking
professional courses, stu-
dents must take classes de-
voted to what the university
calls "spiritual absorption"
— studies in Jewish history,
literature, and traditions.
That way, says dean of stu-
dents Pinchas Hayman, the
newcomers may acquire a
sense that they have not
just run from something —
whether from privation or
oppression — but rather
that they have come to
something, embracing a
land and a spirit that for
Jews holds special meaning.
Only then, perhaps, may
these transplants to Israeli
soil really "take" — as has
28-year-old Leonid
Polterovich, a protege of Vi-
tali Milman who arrived in
Israel just two years ago.
Today the young mathema-
tician, who has adopted the
name Aryeh ("lion," in
Hebrew, as in the Russian
"Leonid"), works in his
chosen field at Tel Aviv Un-
iversity. But what is special
about Mr. Polterovich is
that he has already commit-
ted himself not just to a job
in Israel; he has committed
himself to being in Israel.
A few years ago, Mr.
Polterovich says, he decided
to be circumcised. In an op-
eration on a table in a pri-
vate apartment, in front of
"a group of old men," he re-
members, without
anesthesia, he couldn't look;
still, he never had a
moment's doubt. He says he
was in pain for months af-
terward.