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Honor Our Educators,
But Improve Our Attitudes

Sunday's teacher appreciation event at B'nai
Moshe is an opportunity for the community to
honor some 800 Jewish educators. The event will
surely be one of koved and fellowship, an evening
to remember.
But this community needs to understand that
our teachers need more than an evening of recog-
nition. It's a matter of attitude, community at-
titude.
Good teachers, men and women whom we en-
trust with the Jewish education of our children,
still do not receive enough support from this corn-
munity.
We cannot point a finger for lack of support
solely at Federation or any agency or synagogue,
but rather in the direction of parents themselves.
Families — mothers, fathers, grandparents, un-
cles and aunts — need to understand that our
faith is living Judaism. Dropping the children
off at school is not enough. Some examples:
Many of those who will come together on Sun-
day evening can tell you the story of the student
who comes to class with a soccer uniform on or
of the student with a note in her hand about
needing to leave early for a ballet recital. Reli-
gious school, like soccer, like ballet, is something
they do, not something they live. Don't ask the
family to prioritize where religion, soccer and

ballet fit in the child's life. The answer you hear
might not fit a positive expectation.
Going to the soccer game is an attitude. It tells
the teacher that no matter how prepared the
child comes to class, there is a segment, a large
one, that isn't willing to prepare for anything
other than a bar or bat mitzvah.
But we pass the attitude on to the teachers in
other ways. Jewish educators, by and large,
choose to teach in synagogues because they feel
a safety in being with other Jews, and they feel
it is a commitment to helping create a better
Jewish world. Goodness knows, they usually
don't do it for the money. More money, more
training, more evaluation need to be provided
to our religious-school teachers.
Parents, if you were half as involved or "in the
face" of your child's Jewish education and edu-
cators as you are in their secular-school educa-
tion, we wouldn't be worrying about
intermarriage or assimilation.
Again, it's an attitude.
Parents, change that attitude.
Federation, synagogues, make your attitude
even better.
If we don't, the attitude will put Jewish edu-
cation right where we don't want it.
In the corner.

The Missing In Action
Are Not Forgotten

4

The twists and turns of the Middle East peace
talks have become as integral to life in that re-
gion as the hopeless military conflict that it seeks
to replace. But in the barrage of headlines — on
Monday it was German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl's meeting with Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and
Jordan's King Hussein — we often forget the
painful individual sagas that lasting peace hopes
to address.
For Israel, no such chapter in the long, com-
plex story of the Arab-Israeli conflict is more
stinging than the unknown fate of a handful of
soldiers missing in action. This year, June 11
marks the 13th anniversary of the disappear-
ance of Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman and Yehu-
da Katz from Lebanon's Syrian-controlled Bekaa
Valley after a furious tank battle. A fourth sol-
dier, Israel air force navigator Ron Arad, a pris-
oner of war, was captured in Lebanon after
bailing out of his crippled plane nine years ago.
In recent years, there have been persistent ru-
mors that Mr. Arad is alive and that the oth-
ers might be as well.
Sunday, June 11, has been declared "MIA
Day" by the National Committee for Israeli MIAs
and POWs at the Conference of Presidents of
Major American Jewish Organizations. The ef-

fort is meant to call attention to the sad fact that
the captors of the missing servicemen, believed
to be Lebanese militia, refuse to provide infor-
mation about the whereabouts or fate of Israel's
soldiers.
Children in New York-area Jewish schools are
writing letters this week to Walid Al Moualem,
Syria's ambassador to the United States, ask-
ing the government of Syria to seek out and dis-
close information about the servicemen. The
letter-writing project is being undertaken in co-
ordination with the Board of Jewish Education
of Greater New York. A similar project should
be undertaken here by our Jewish day schools
and Hebrew schools. Send a letter to the Syrian
Embassy at 2215 Wyoming Ave., N.W., Wash-
ington, D.C. 20008.
As important, we hope that the Rabin gov-
ernment continues to make the return, or at the
very least, information about these servicemen,
a strong concern during the restarted negotia-
tions with the Syrians. As the peace talks drag
on, there is a growing tide of reluctance and even
animosity toward it. Progress on the MIA issue
can be one of the many tangible results of peace.
There is no reason for this not to happen.

Letters

Infighting
Dividing Us

It was with great interest that
I read the article by Rabbi Eric
Yoffie relative to religious plu-
ralism in Israel, and then the
hostile rebuttals in the Letters
column the following week.
Many years ago I gave a lec-
ture at the Jewish Community
Center titled "Is There Religious
Freedom in Israel?" I was puz-
zled as to why Christians and
Moslems had religious freedom
in Israel but Reform and Con-
servative Jews did not.
Since then, the Holocaust
Memorial Center has opened
and I am the first docent to have
given 1,000 tours, 98 percent to
non-Jewish groups. The Holo-
caust victims were selected for
slave labor and extinction be-
cause of racial and religious af-
filiation at birth. The preaching
for centuries of superiority of
one religion over another led to
this horrible period in history.
Now, Judaism is following
suit. We hear of the superiority
of one branch of Judaism over
another. Judaism is broken
down into many practices and I
have found more infighting be-
tween branches of Judaism
than between Jewish and non-
Jewish. Perhaps I should spend
my volunteer time with in-
trafaith work instead of inter-
faith.
The purpose of religion is to
unite people. Unfortunately, it
has divided people.

Leonard H. Trunsky

West Bloomfield

friend of the Jewish people. I do
not consider it a shame that the
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America has invited him to be a
speaker at the annual Louis
Marshall dinner. I feel they
know what they are doing, and
I completely agree with their de-
cision.
But the question I have to
raise is, who is going to make
sure that Israel will continue
getting the aid it is getting from
the United States today?
It will be the Newt Gingrich-
es and a lot of conservative con-
gressmen and senators along
with the Democrats. Have the
liberals buried their heads in the
sand? Does the Republican
sweep in the last election tell
them nothing?
I hope President Clinton will
be re-elected, but what if he
isn't? For Israel's sake, I feel that
the Jewish people should be
equally represented in both ma-
jor parties.

Sam Seltzer

Huntington Woods

Refreshing
Read

With all of the craziness that our
country has been experiencing
of late, it was refreshing to read
Alan Hitsky's Editor's Notebook
in the May 26 issue. He pulled
it all together.
His satire confronts us with
the ridiculous state in which we
find ourselves. Our heroes are
anti-heroes. There's a perverse
mood afloat. Let's hope it's not
terminal.

Diane Pomish

A Strong Need
For Equal Representation

I was quite flabbergasted when
I read Leonard Fein's column
"Embracing Poverty's Enemy"
on May 19 in The Jewish News.
I always knew that Mr. Fein
was a liberal, but this column,
in my opinion, is really out of
line.
It is much more important for
me, and I think the great ma-
jority of the Jewish people in this
country, that Newt Gingrich is
one of Israel's greatest friends
in Congress and also a great

West Bloomfield

Letters
Policy

Letters must be type-
written, double-spaced,
and include the name,
home address, daytime
phone number and sig-
nature of the writer.

