Sex, Drugs and AIDS

argie Fuller dreads the
day she will bury her son
Tommie, but she knows
it is inevitable.
Tommie is 30 years old
— and he has AIDS.
Ms. Fuller and her son
spoke last week to Tem-
ple Emanu-El's Monday
night school students and
their parents in the final
session of "Choose Life
That You May Live." It is
a curriculum developed
by Michigan Jewish
AIDS Coalition and Jew-
ish Experiences For Fam-
ilies (J.E.F.F.) and en-
dorsed by the Jewish Ed-

ucators Council.
Evelyn Gonzales, Sue
Efros and Robert Lebow
joined the Fullers during last
week's panel discussion. Ms.
Gonzales is a case manager
with the AIDS Consortium;
she is the mother of two and
is HIV-positive. Ms. Efros
lost her brother to AIDS a lit-
tle over a year ago. Mr.
Lebow's lover died of AIDS
complications this past Oc-
tober.
They were the names and
faces of the deadly disease
that parents and students
had been learning about the
previous two weeks.

Families Joined together for a more Intimate discussion about AIDS.

Michigan Jewish
AIDS Coalition
and Jewish
Experiences
For Families
introduce
a pilot
curriculum to
Temple Emanu-El
students and
their parents.

LESLEY PEARL

STAFF WRITER

GLENN TRIEST

PHOTOGRAPHER

Week One

Jan. 11 — Parents of stu-
dents in grades 8-12 met
with Temple Emanu-El's
Temple Educator Ira Wise
and Congregation Program
Coordinator for J.E.F.F. Dot-
tie Dressler for the piloting
of the AIDS curriculum.
"Statistics are not pretty.
This is a disease that kills
and it doesn't discriminate,"
Mr. Wise said.
"The characters. in the
Bible didn't know about
AIDS. But they did know
about incurable, transmit-
table diseases. So what they
had to say is relevant to a

Jewish response to AIDS," he
said.
A 17-question quiz was
passed out to parents. It had
true/false statements such as
"AIDS stands for Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syn-
drome" and "Everyone who
has HIV will get AIDS with-
in two years." Answers and
explanations were given.
Several Torah texts were
read and participants dis-
cussed how the ancient writ-
ings apply to Jewish
behavior and AIDS. Jewish
values like visiting the sick,
saving a life and treating
neighbors as ourselves were