If You Build It, Will They Come?
ordinated, professionally planned campaign to
build awareness, interest and enthusiasm
among the target audiences — the Orthodox
and residents of Oak Park, Huntington Woods
and Southfield.
Perhaps the facility will be so impressive,
and the membership rates so attractive, "they"
will. come in great numbers on their own. But
if you build it and "they" don't come, the corn-
munity will be saddled with a white elephant
and a drain on scarce financial resources.
You've come this far, Jewish Center and Fed-
eration leadership. As the movie implores, "go
the distance" and don't squander a unique op-
portunity to create excitement and an added
sense of community, and to attract significant
numbers of new members in the process. And
to those who live in the area of the JPM facil-
ity, it's time to step up to the plate with your
votes of confidence...memberships.
With six weeks to go before the opening of the
renovated and expanded Jimmy Prentis Mor-
ris Jewish Community Center in Oak Park
we're reminded of the movie Field of Dreams
and the divinely inspired building of a baseball
diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield.
The movie ends with a long line of cars,
drawn as if by magic, to this special, out-of-the-
way place. If you build it, he (and they) will
come...
The JPM expansion, years in the planning
and designed to be the keystone of efforts by
the Federation to stabilize and revitalize the
Jewish community's presence in portions of
Oak Park and Southfield, is not a mirage. The
bricks and mortar are in place. If you build it,
they will come...
But will "they?"
To date, efforts to market the JPM have been
low-key. There has been no multi-faceted, co-
An Agency Gone Awry
The Jewish Agency, a quasi-Israeli government
agency that also includes the World Zionist Or-
ganization, plays a key role in helping Jews
emigrate to Israel and assisting their settle-
ment once they are there. It is an important
task that cannot be allowed to suffer.
Yet that is what is currently happening,
seemingly with the assistance of agency lead-
ers who have allowed a simmering scandal to
go unchecked.
The agency — which is primarily funded
through donations raised in this nation by the
United Jewish Appeal and elsewhere outside
of Israel through the Keren Hayesod — is cur-
rently under a cloud of suspicion stemming
from the alleged financial wrongdoing of its ex-
ecutive director, Simcha Dinitz.
According to news reports, most of which
originated in the Jerusalem Post, Mr. Dinitz
has over the past five years flouted both agency
standards and ethical considerations by un-
duly spending tens of thousands of agency dol-
lars to finance lavish trips around the world
for himself and his wife. The precise amount
may never be known because Mr. Dinitz nev-
er kept accurate records, according to the Post.
Among the allegations are that Mr. Dinitz
and his wife rang up a $1,100 hotel and restau-
rant bill during a layover in Paris that lasted
just a few hours, and that Mr. Dinitz insisted
on using a chauffeured limousine to go from
the El Al terminal to the TWA terminal at New
York's Kennedy Airport, a distance of less than
200 yards. The ride cost the agency $200. A taxi
" would have cost $2, and an airport shuttle bus
would have been free. Mr Dinitz also appar-
ently widely used agency credit cards to pur-
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chase personal items at various department
stores.
All of this comes at a time when the agency
is $100 million in debt on an annual budget of
about $500 million.
Whether legal wrongdoing is involved will
be determined by an Israeli police investiga-
tion already under way.
But even if Mr. Dinitz — who so far has re-
tained the support of Jewish Agency Chairman
Mendel Kaplan and Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin — is found legally innocent, it is clear
that this episode has already substantially
damaged the agency's reputation and even its
fund-raising ability.
The question is why has the Jewish Agency
taken so long to publicly deal with the Dinitz
affair? Rumors about Mr. Dinitz' spending
habits have floated around for some time; ear-
ly this year, the agency's board of governors
even received a report confirming irregulari-
ties, although Mr. Dinitz was absolved of any
intention to deceive.
Recently, the agency's board of governors ap-
proved a measure calling for a probe of the al-
legations and their impact on the agency. It's
about time — but that only came after an at-
tempt to get the agency's annual assembly to
openly discuss the issue was beaten back.
Serious allegations have been raised against
Mr. Dinitz, as well as other agency officials who
are said to have overlooked his wild spending
for too long. The Jewish Agency needs to im-
mediately get to the bottom of this sorry situ-
ation — and to terminate those who have either
misspent agency funds or covered up such mis-
appropriations.
Cartoonists & Writers
Syndicate
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ABSURD. JC1.01 S i4 MESS
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1AkIZE
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AS INDIVIDUALS!!
The Irony Of
Dine's Downfall
Addressing Our
Own Prejudices
It is ironic that Tom Dine's
four-year-old statements
about Orthodox Jews should
be the cause of his downfall.
Mr. Dine, who admittedly
presided over AIPAC during
an era of unprecedented
growth, also ushered in a pe-
riod in which AIPAC, for the
first time, failed to support
the democratically elected
government of Israel.
American supporters of Be-
gin and Shamir were shoul-
dered to the side as AIPAC
let it be known that they
didn't care what the United
States did to Begin and
Shamir. This eventually led
to the Bush policy of with-
holding promised billions in
housing loan guarantees for
Soviet Jews, public snubbing
and refusal to meet with
then-Prime Minister Shamir,
intense pressure to negotiate
with the PLO and unabashed
support for a Rabin/Labor vic-
tory. All this because Dine
and his largely liberal-left-
Democrat supporters were
more comfortable with the
Labor/Histadrut axis than
the Likud. That ignominy
should have resulted in calls
for Dine's resignation.
Now, we have a Labor gov-
ernment in which Minister
Shulamit Aloni reviles the
Torah and observant Jews
with every possible epithet.
Do we hear AIPAC support-
ers calling for her ouster? Yet
four-year-old remarks are
published — remarks that
are very probably an accurate
representation of the deepest
feelings of many American
Jews (in their profound igno-
rance of Orthodox Judaism)
— and Tom Dine is brought
down.
Tom Dine should not have
been placed in a leadership
position in the Jewish world.
The irony of his downfall, not
for his political impropriety,
but for his casual remarks
can best be appreciated in the
hollow echoing silence Amer-
ican Jewry reserves for Shu-
lamit Aloni and ilk.
I would like to thank Yakin;
Whitehead (In Our Own
Words, July 2) for sharing he;,---<
wisdom. She is an eloquent
testimony to the quality of a<
Hillel education.
I also wanted to comment
on her remark that anti-/
Semitism "is everywhere. It's
bred into people. ParentP
teach their kids..." This is a
truth • which contains two.)
parts. It is true that prejudice
in general is everywhere —
in all of us. We learn it from)
our parents and our society -))
We even learn it from our
holy books.
But too often we only rec-
ognize prejudice in others.
And that is the second part of
the truth. We all have
learned prejudice. Prejudice ( I
against those who are not like
us. We collectively have-)
learned prejudices regarding
women and children. We`
have prejudices regarding
people who have different
sexual mores than we do. We
have prejudices against reli-
gions that we do not under-
stand. We have all sorts of,
prejudices. If we can work on
our own prejudices, we can
help change the world.
It is a job that we cannot do
alone. Only those who suffer
from our prejudices can tel.-\
us why it hurts. The problem
is to hear them and under
stand them. As Yakini so elo-
quently says, "I'm j us t<
making sure that I'm one less
bigot." Let us just remember
that is a process, not a state-/
of being.
Sol Lachman
Southfield
.
Barry Mehler`
Big Rapids ,r
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