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 . 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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.