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orials
Marvelous Melvindale
Most Detroit-area Jews don't know where
Melvindale is, nor have they ever been through
that fair Downriver city. But the implications
of its school board meeting this week have far-
reaching consequences for all of us, whether
we live in Walled Lake or Grosse Pointe — or
Melvindale.
A group of Melvindale parents that includes
the president of the school board and two
Christian pastors requested that Melvindale
Public Schools include the study of creation-
ism in the district's biology curriculum. The
school board discussed the issue Monday
night, but took no action and did not decide
when it would revive the subject again.
Did the issue die? Hardly.
It would be nice to think that public discus-
sion of creationism — the belief shared by
many religious groups, including Judaism, that
a supreme being created the universe — would
lead to education of the public about the U.S.
constitutional rights of all citizens. But numer-
ous court decisions have not dissuaded
Christian groups throughout the country to
mount challenges to local school boards and
insist that creationism be taught alongside the
theory of evolution in our public schools.
As we have asked on these pages in the past,
whose version of creationism should be taught?
Will Melvindale parents accept a Jewish ver-
sion of the Book of Genesis? Or the Koran? Or
is the Buddhist story of the beginning of the
world acceptable?
Put in those terms, the answer is obvious:
The only acceptable version is my version, or
our version, and we don't care about anyone
else's version.
It seems that we are prematurely getting
into the December Dilemma of Christmas vs.
Chanukah, and December is still several weeks
away. And that's the point — religious free-
dom needs year-round vigilance.
Jews and other minorities attending
American public schools have been well pro-
tected in the last three decades from the "will
of the majority." That hasn't stopped the reli-
gious right from continuing its attempts to
impose its views on a society that it sees as des-
perately in need of its direction.
Unfortunately, that direction is not as
homogenized as fundamentalists of any persua-
sion would have us believe. ❑
Oakland County
Loses A Friend
Larry Pernick's death last week is a tragedy for
the citizens of Oakland County and the Jewish
community.
Mr. Pernick was one of our most approach-
able public figures. His ready smile and warm
personality disarmed his political foes on the
1997
2
Oakland County
Commission and won
the trust of a bipartisan
constituency which eas-
ily elected him to the
commission for 28
years.
One of our favorite
recollections of Mr.
Pernick was his door-
to-door campaigns dur-
ing the biennial August
Larry Pernick
primary elections. His
northern Southfield and Lathrup Village
neighbors could see their county commission-
er on weekends, walking the streets of their
subdivisions to distribute his campaign litera-
ture. He considered it a bonus when old
friends and new acquaintances stopped to
talk.
When the Democrats controlled the com-
mission, he served as chairman. With
Republican control, he headed the
Democratic Caucus, lending his experience
and openness to anyone willing to listen.
Larry Pernick's pleasant nature and concern
for his fellow citizens will be sorely missed. ❑
A Friend Of
Freedom
Sir Isaiah Berlin once said, "I find death a nui-
sance. I object to it. I'd rather it didn't happen."
But happen it did last week when Sir Isaiah
— a revered philosopher, scholar, staunch
advocate of pluralism, bon vivant, conversa-
tionalist, music lover, ardent Zionist, and
friend of some of the century's most famous
individuals — such as Sigmund Freud, Chaim
Weizmann, Virginia Woolf and Felix
Frankfurter — succumbed to a fatal heart
attack in Oxford, England. He was 88.
Although not a household name, Sir Isaiah
left behind a highly influential body of work
that explores the essence of liberty, the inher-
ent failings of totalitarianism, the journey to
discover a perfect society, and the human
longing for a homeland.
Among Sir Isaiah's best-known works is the
1953 essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox," a
study of Tolstoy's War and Peace that explores
different aspects of human nature. His subse-
quent essay "Two Concepts of Liberty," which
is considered a major contribution to political
theory, argues that both liberty with and with-
out state interference is essential for a just
society.
Of his commitment to the concept of a
Jewish state, Sir Isaiah once said, "Assimilation
might be a quite good thing, but it never
worked ... There isn't a Jew in the world
known to me who somewhere inside him does
not have a tiny drop of uneasiness vis-a-vis
them, the majority among whom they live." _7
Photo by AP/ Kok
tN-A,
Alan Goodman, an Israeli with U.S. citizenship who was serving
a life sentence for killing two Palestinians, was _freed after agreeing
to spend the next eight years in the U.S.
LITTERS
Exhibit Attack
Was Unfair
As a member of the commit-
tee of "Jewish Detroit in the
1920s and '30s: Revisiting
Our Past," I am aghast at the
attack made on our event
chairman Stephen Rosman
by Professor Sidney Bolkosky
of U-M Dearborn in the
Oct. 31 issue ("Historical
Truths Fairly Shown?")
Let me set the record
straight. It was not Stephen
Rosman alone, but a com-
mittee of 15, comprised of a
cross section of our Jewish
community in age and reli-
gious belief, all with a keen
interest in history and
genealogy. Our committee
detests revisionism and with
that strong stance, the inclu-
sion of the Purple Gang in
the exhibit became a contro-
versy that received national
attention.
With over 9,000 people
visiting the exhibit during
October and with a sold-out
attendance at its opening
night, this event was a corn,:
plete success. We achieved 0
our goal of bringing quality
programming to the commu-
nity in spite of the many
threats and closed doors
from community organiza-
tions, and our efforts stimu-
lated people to visit the JCC.
The photo exhibition was
the first of the kind to focus
on Detroit in the 1920s and
'30s. The goal was to present
an overview of the times, not
to create a jumble of histori-
cal dates. Forgive us if a date
may have been wrong on a
caption or a favorite photo
didn't make the final cut.
ATTACK on page 30