750 DETROIT THE JEWISH NEWS 9 CHESHVAN 5755 / OCTOBER 14, 1994 CLOSE UP Jewish Foods Celebrities Can't Resist It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood... For Bagels And Chicken Soup Story on page 50 Changing With The Times The Allied Jewish Campaign is making some fundamental modifications. ALAN HITSKY ASSOCIATE EDITOR hen Allied Jewish Campaign volun- teers make their calls on Super Sunday, Oct. 23, they will be signaling the start of something old and something new. The Campaign — the Detroit Jewish communi- ty's 68-year old fund-rais- ing arm for some 20 area agencies and scores more nationally and over- seas — is undergoing ma- jor changes. They reflect changes in the Jewish com- munity, changes in Jewish identity and changes in how individuals are divid- ing their philanthropic dol- lars. Campaign totals for the last four years have leveled off annually at $26 million from 16,500 donors. Officials at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, the organization that runs the Allied Jewish Campaign, argue that the totals don't reflect the reality of multiple cam- paigns during the last five years. TIMES page 8 $15 Million For Education Davidson gift to Seminary. ARTHUR J. MAGIDA SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS I n what is billed as the largest gift ever made to a single institution of Jewish education, Detroit businessman and philanthropist William M. Davidson has given $15 mil- lion to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. The funds will be used to create the largest grad- uate school of Jewish education in the country. JTS officials are hopeful the new school will ele- vate the status and prestige of educators in Jewish day and congregational schools around the nation. In effect, seminary officials are using the gift as a challenge to local federations to boost their fund- ing for Jewish education and put teachers and ad- ministrators in Jewish educational institutions on a parity with those in private secular schools. "Education is the key to Jewish continuity and the key to Jewish education is training more se- nior personnel," said Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the. seminary's chancellor. "To win this war, we need more troops. This gift lets us put more troops in the world. It will also have a ripple effect through- out Jewish communities by challenging local fed- erations to properly fund the teaching profession, which is a be- William leaguered, undervalued and un- Davidson: Aims derpaid profession." to "revitalize" Rabbi Roy I. Rosenbaum, the Jewish education. seminary's vice president for de- velopment, agreed. 'This," he said, "is about making Hebrew school teachers as good as any in the United States." On Oct. 3, Mr. Davidson told the chancellor that the seminary would be the beneficiary of the gift. The funds, according to Rabbi Schorsch, will come to JTS "in sev- eral large sums." The Detroit businessman said he "believes that with this gift the seminary can revitalize the field of Jewish education and make it, once again, an attractive career choice for our best and brightest young people. I believe the seminary is uniquely qualified to achieve that goal and make a tremendous, lasting difference in the future of the American Jewish community." As had Rabbi Schorsch, Mr. Davidson also portrayed the gift as "an invitation and a challenge to others to re- double their efforts to create still greater resources for Jewish education programming and professional train- ing." Rabbi Schorsch said he has "tremendous rapport" with Mr. Davidson, whom he has known for five years and who owns the Detroit Pistons basketball team. But the rabbi did concede that he "knows just enough about basketball to talk no more than five minutes about it." In addition to owning the Pistons, Mr. Davidson, 70, owns Guardian Industries, which is reportedly the fifth largest glass manufacturer in the world and has helped place Mr. Davidson on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest Americans with assets of over $800 million. Among Mr. Davidson's overseas investments is a $100 million glass factory in Israel's Galilee, which, with 400 employees, is the largest single undertaking of private industry in that country. He also is a former chairman of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit's Allied Jewish Campaign. In 1992, he was the recipient of the Detroit Federation's highest accolade, the Fred M. Butzel Memorial Award for Distinguished Community Service. The gift, which is exactly double the size of a donation that Mr. Davidson gave in 1992 to the University of Michigan to help train businesspeople from the Third World, will let JTS move from a department of Jewish EDUCATION page 24 DETROIT Six Days In October Washington Impact A photography contest for our readers. A one-day mission proves invaluable. Page 21 Page 96 Contents on page 3