Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit Your child deserves the best-- We Provide It! Way Cool Preschool &Childcare at the J CC ...Enroll your child in Infant/Toddler, Preschool or Kindergarten Enrichment today! WHAT MAKES OUR PROGRAM SPECIAL FOR OUR CHILDREN * Superior 5taff/Child Ratios * Physical Education x:x Swimming Lessons * Music Specialist * Library & Computers Judaic Learning jcc Jewish Community Center ‘,I" Metropolitan Deinit * Children's Museum Safe, Supervised Environment FOR OUR PARENTS , * Before and After-Care (7 am.-6 pm.) 2 Parent Education Seminars Parentreacher Committee * Jewish Holiday Family Programs Summer Preschool Camp 98 * School Break Programming For more information or to reserve a spot for your child, please call the Child Development Center in West Bloomfield at (248) 661-7605 or in Oak Park at (248) 967-4040. Tours are available and JCC members receive a significant discount. 8/21 1998 D. Dan a, Betty Kahn Building 6600 W. Maple Road West Bloomfield, MI L43322 72 Detroit Jewish News Jimmy Prentis Morris Building A. Alfred Taubman Camptz 15110 W.T en Mile Road • Oak Park. Mt t48237 EdItoR's NoTe he Gift about the Holocaust. I sat, unmov- ing, as though I had suddenly myself, I know that people become mute. And to make mat- are capable of change. : tens worse, no one else said any- Sometimes these are dramatic: a 1 thing. There were a few uncom- welfare mother becomes a top- notch attorney, an atheist finds reli- fortable chuckles, then silence. By the time I was in my 30s I gion, a selfish man suddenly finds was a charter member of the Cyn- the generous heart within himself. ics of America Club. Part of that Sometimes, though, these comes with being a changes are small, journalist. You meet subtle and quiet. up with so many This is the story of boneheads and bums one such change — yes, there are a within me. lot of nice people out Mercifully, I am there, but no reporter not the same person worth her salt wants I was 20 years ago, to write about a when I was 20. I bunch of 6-year-olds thought I knew rescuing a drowning everything, but of dog when she can course l•really had talk about how some no clue. My whole politician was caught focus on life was With a secret Swiss bank account, me, me, me. I made fun of a lot funds from which he was using to and, above all, I was sarcastic. pay for his sweetheart's sex- And why not, I thought: Life is change operation. These, then, fierce and bleak. Now I have to become the kinds of people you say that I came to this conclusion spend time with, the kinds of peo- in part based on actual incidents. ple you imagine populate the I've met up with some pretty . world. unscrupulous characters. One was And in truth the world can be a a woman — I never even learned terrible place. I am constantly her name — who was at a party I astonished at how evil we are to attended when I was 19. She one another, and especially chil- :.wanted everyone to hear this dren. No matter how many times I great joke, she said. It went like hear reports of child abuse, I am this, sickened each time. Once I saw a "What's the difference between former army sergeant who had a pizza and a Jew? taken charge of a rehabilitation "A pizza doesn't scream when center for young boys in trouble. you put it in an oven." He told of one child who had So breathtakingly vivid is this spent all his life living in a car, memory that I can still remember eating out of the trash, his par- much about the very moment: ents, who knows where, most of I where I was, where she was, the his life. And this sergeant — a music playing, the day of the tough-looking man with solid week — and the fact that I said shoulders — began to cry. He absolutely nothing. Because I said: "It's shameful what we do to couldn't. I simply could not believe children in this country." that someone had made a joke ecause I have seen it in