Opinion
Community Views
Deadly Information
Remains A Moral Issue
The Many Aspects
Of Jewish Institutions
NEIL RUBIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
LAURENCE !MERMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
The host at din-
ner this past
Thanksgiving
placed me next to
my cousin Dan.
Dan is considered
somewhat of a
wunderkind. A
product of Stan-
ford and the Har-
vard Business School, he made
partner at a major consulting firm
in his 20s. His specialty is strate-
gic planning for organizations.
I made the mistake of re-
marking that the Detroit Jewish
community is awash in strategic
plans. The Jewish Family Ser-
vice, Yad Ezra, the Jewish Com-
munity Center, B'nai Moshe and
others are all at some stage of the
planning process. Dan spent the
entire evening reporting on his
latest project, developing a strate-
gic plan for his temple. The pro-
ject is not as simple as he first
assumed.
My cousin described, over sal-
ad, his friend Susan. The woman
had just joined Dan's congrega-
tion. Susan remarked to Dan that
price, quality and convenience
were her criteria for selection of
a synagogue. She will purchase
religious services from the clos-
est religious institution which
meets her needs.
Dan's neighbors, Marc and
Marcie, are even more practical.
They joined the congregation
just before their daughter's bat
mitzvah training began and in-
tend to leave immediately after
the ceremony. The two cannot un-
derstand why they must pay a
thousand or more dollars for the
privilege of membership in a re-
ligious institution. They both com-
mented that churches only ask
you to give what you can afford.
No price is set nor does anyone
review your tax returns.
Besides members such as Su-
san, Marc and Marcie, a further
complication, according to Dan,
is that ritual and worship modal-
ities of many Reform congrega-
tions mimic those traditionally
found in Conservative syna-
Laurence lineman is a
Birmingham attorney.
man immerses someone
in near-freezing water to
see how long his subject
lives. He dies. The ex-
periment is repeated again and
again.
Eventually, the man kills
hundreds of people. Some wore
jackets. Some had hats. The
temperature was altered. He
gave them various injuries.
The man is branded a killer
and prosecuted. But his exper-
iments were meticulously de-
tailed and published.
Twenty-five years later, as
the Vietnam War rages, U.S.
pilots are shot down over the
Indochina Sea. It's costly in dol-
lars and potentially human
lives to search for survivors.
How long will they live in cold
waters? How long should the
search go on?
A
gogues. Conversely, the Conser-
vative movement has adopted the
Reform movement's social justice
agenda and its expanded oppor-
tunities for women.
The old labels just don't exist
for Dan. And compounding his
problem of arriving at strategic
choices is a declining and aging
Jewish population, which tends
not to affiliate with a synagogue.
With the main course, Dan began
his discourse on the synagogue.
The traditional synagogue mod-
el is a cradle-to-grave institution
which tries to cater to every sub-
group within its membership. In
larger synagogues, varying litur-
gies can even be utilized. How-
ever, the traditional model is
extremely expensive and labor in-
tensive. Dan, in his presentation
to his temple's leadership, sug-
gested reformulating the syna-
gogue into a niche congregation.
This would have meant struc-
turing the institution around cer-
tain groups and not others. The
board could only discuss the tra-
ditional model of the synagogue.
Neither demographics nor eco-
nomic feasibility entered into the
equation.
The synagogue's leaders are
hard-working and well-intended
persons, who receive no benefits
other than knowing they are do-
ing a good deed. They wish not to
alienate any member.
However, anything but the tra-
ditional model requires leaders
to select between groups.
The niche model requires that
leaders examine whether, for ex-
ample, youths should be favored
over the aged, or those who are
married over those who are sin-
gle, or those with children over
those without issue.
As the pumpkin pie arrived
and the turkey was removed to
the kitchen, Dan remarked that
planning means examining every
option.
To simply reject a possibility
because some group may be
harmed is to shirk leadership.
Leadership means seizing the
helm and selecting a course for
the future.
I disagreed with Dan in one re-
spect. It is easier for a member of
a for-profit board to arrive at a de-
cision. Measures of success are
sales, profits and market share.
The gauges for religious institu-
tions are obscure at best.
Is the aim to be achieved insti-
tutional survival, increased mem-
bership or what? Perhaps the
leaders of Dan's temple and of
other Jewish institutions should
focus less on "how" and more on
the goals to be achieved. ❑
6355360 @NCIMAIL COM .
11
Mat
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/ Think?"
Does the community need
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To respond: "So, What Do You Think?"
27676 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI 48034
timony of those who survived
and those who didn't — is this:
Should we use the data col-
lected by the Nazis if this ben-
efits others? Where do we draw
the line? Does using this infor-
mation persuade others to con-
tinue such research?
To gain this information,
Jews and non-Jews were
humiliated, abused, tortured,
brutalized and, ultimately,
murdered. Those conducting
the experiments readily carried
out their tasks. And let's face
it, by their standards, they did
an outstanding job.
The issue came to mind upon
reading a New York Times ar-
ticle last week about the strug-
gle of Columbia University's
Dr. Howard A Israel. This self-
described "ordinary Jew" was
shocked to learn the Pernkopf
The air and rescue search
team commander unhesitat-
ingly reaches for a book with
data from the earlier experi-
ments.
Should this book exist? Can
one use information gained by
unjust means, even when of
critical benefit? Won't this en-
courage others to conduct grue-
some experiments?
Since the Nazi era, such eth-
ical dilemmas have become ag-
onizingly real. They will
continue to be with us in the
coming decades.
The final legacy of the Holo-
caust — the one beyond the tes-
Anatomy, an atlas that he and
other surgeons use, was penned
by an ardent Nazi who might
have used as models for the
book's unmatched illustrations
cadavers from Nazi executions.
Eduard Pernkopf eagerly
joined the Nazis in 1933. In ear-
lier editions of the book, he
signed his name with a swasti-
ka. Later, publishers eliminat-
ed it.
To me, the case is simple.
Science has advanced; actual
photographs of anatomy can be
obtained and the data found
elsewhere. Thus, the lasting
merit of the work is aesthetic.
People should not use this book,
but
it should not be banned.
Neil Rubin is editor of our sister
It is equivalent to the music
paper, the Atlanta Jewish
DEADLY page 24
Times.