itorials

Editorials and Letters to the Editor are posted and archived on JN Online:
w-ww.detroitjewishnews.coln

A Sinai Legacy

hen Sinai Hospital closes this
summer in a cost-cutting move,
Detroit Jewry can take heart in
knowing the historically Jewish
hospital will live on in the soul of a vibrant
part of our community — The Jewish Fund.
Created through the Detroit Medical Cen-
ter's purchase of Sinai in 1997, The Jewish
Fund has helped elevate the quality of services
for the infirm, the elderly, families and young
people. Whether JARC or Kadima, COJES or
Jewish Family Service, MJAC or Jewish Voca-
tional Service, The Jewish Fund has responded
with support. DMC/Sinai also has benefited;
some of this support will continue at the
merged Sinai-Grace Hospital and other DMC
operations.
So The Jewish Fund is making a difference.
In addition to fulfilling needs within the
Jewish community, we strongly believe The
Jewish Fund should support, in a significant
way, non-Jewish needs that will benefit the
health of the Detroit community served by
Sinai-Grace.
The DMC bought Sinai for $65 million in
1997, furnishing the endowment for the inde-
pendently run fund. Three award grant periods
since then have cycled $6.1 million into a vari-

IN FOCUS

ety of local health and social welfare needs.
The Jewish Fund will keep alive the memo-
ry of the historic milestones that collectively
led to Sinai's groundbreaking in 1951 —
including the Orthodox rabbis' "Buy a Brick
to Save the Sick" march on Hastings Street in
Detroit back in 1912.
Sinai sprang from the chilling discrimina-
tion facing Jewish doctors who sought hospital
privileges in the early years of this century. To
this day, 46 years after it opened and long past
its heyday, Sinai remains a symbol of the Jew-
ish community's enterprising spirit and resolve.
The Jewish Fund now has the opportunity
to become that symbol.
But unlike the bricks and mortar of, and
historically terrific treatment and care at, Sinai
Hospital, The Jewish Fund will represent the
Jewish community's commitment to tzedakah
through grant dollars.
The burden falls to the fund's board of
directors to be ever-vigilant and responsive to
the community's will as it seeks applications
and awards grants twice a year.
The Jewish Fund has the potential to
endure as a source of pride and purpose for
Detroit Jewry. It's our obligation, as a commu-
nity, to assure that potential is fully realized. 1 -1

Symbolic Lesson

supremacy, converted the
f the Potawatomi sym-
Hindu symbol for prosperity
bol that resembles a
and uniry, similar in design but
Nazi swastika can enrich
with
clockwise arms, into a
understanding of Native
shocking
symbol of genocide is
American culture as well as
all the more reason to teach
the horrors of the Holocaust,
Americans of all cultures about
then it deserves to stay as a
the Potawatomi symbol's inno-
tile inlay on the floor of the
cent origins.
Walled Lake Community
A conspicuously displayed
Education Center.
plaque
could help teach just
The Holocaust Memorial
that.
Center in West Bloomfield,
Such a plaque could
about to undergo an $8 mil-
describe
the symbol's call for
The Potawatomi symbol in
lion expansion, is filled with
good
health
and prosperity
Walled
Lake
haunting remnants of Hitler's
among
the
Potawatomis,
who
tyranny. They serve as constant
interacted
peacefully
with
many
white
settlers
reminders of the survivors' cry, "Never again!"
until Oakland County's steady growth in the
So, too, might the Potawatomi symbol serve
1830s and 1840s, because of cheap land and
to enlighten and educate students, staff and
abundant
water power, drove them further
visitors who walk by the 77-year-old tile inlay
west.
at the entrance to the Walled Lake Communi-
If the Potawatomi symbol can't somehow be
ty Education Center.
used
as an acceptable teaching tool — and
The four-armed symbol, obscured for years
instead
serves only to emotionally hurt sur-
by a doormat, was included in the center's
vivors
of
German concentration camp atroci-
original construction as a tribute to Walled
ties
—
then
we too will urge its removal.
Lake's ties to the Native Americans who called
That
few
people until now knew what this
the area home until 170 years ago. The 1992
curious
swastika
look-alike even meant, howev-
to
construction pre-dates the Nazi Parry's rise
er,
underscores
a
public ignorance we should
the power by a decade.
strive to overcome, not perpetuate. 17
That the Nazi Party, promoting Aryan

Link To The Land

Helpers during the Jewish National Fund's Green Sunday
annual phonathon Feb. 21 in Southfield included local vice
president Michael D. Langnas of West Bloomfield and his chil-
dren, Sara, 4, and Brian, 2. A cadre of JNF volunteers called
local households detailing the urgent message about Israel's
water shortage, a byproduct of forest fires, new immigrants and
an irregular rainy season. JNF is the fund-raising arm of Keren
Kayemeth Leisrael, the official land agency in Israel on behalf
of all Jewish people everywhere.

LETTERS

Let's Learn
From Symbols

There is a preoccupation in
this community with percep-
tions of offense and anti-
Semitism. The latest example
is the reaction to the back-
ward "swastika" inlay at the
Walled Lake Community
Education Center. It is a sym-
bol of the Native American
Potawatomis; it pre-dates the
Nazi era by hundreds of years.
The appropriate way of
dealing with the fact that it is
part of the floor decoration is
to explain its meaning, and
also use it as an opportunity
to contrast, and educate peo-
ple about, the atrocities of the
Nazis. Some members of our
community are demanding
that it be removed. Are we to
j list "erase" historical symbols
because they may have an

association with other histori-
cal periods or cultures?
Similarly, during
Chanukah, someone very near
and dear to me related an
incident that she perceived to
be anti-Semitic. A gentile
woman whom she has known
for years asked her what those
orange lights" in the window
meant. This person took great
offense at the question and
assumed it was intended to be
an anti-Semitic "dig" at her.
The likelihood that the
woman was just curious or
interested in learning about
our Jewish culture never
occurred to her, nor would
she admit that it was even a
possibility. She was convinced
that the question demonstrat-
ed the woman's anti-Semi-
tism. I suggest that the
woman would be highly
offended that this person

CC

3/5

1999

Detroit Jewish News

27