EDITOR'S WATCH

Sustaining A Thirst
For Jewish Learning

/ -

and potential — and giving them
very Jew who wants to help
structured roles that mean something
perpetuate the culture, her-
in our synagogues and communal
itage and spirituality of our
groups.
4,000-year-old faith has a
One of the emotional high points of
lifelong obligation to Jewish educa-
the
National Federation of Temple
tion, as a learner and as a teacher. We
Youth convention, Bennett
learn for ourselves; we teach
said, occurred Shabbat morn-
our children to want to learn.
ing. The service, led by
The reasons we do so are
Hebrew Union College rab-
plain: if we don't hook our
binic students, was an innov-
kids by the time they're teens,
ative mix of Reform tradition
we may never draw them
and modern interpretation.
spiritually to Judaism. A
Teens experimented with
recent independent nation-
movement, prayer and medi-
wide survey by the Lilly
tation before joining in an
Endowment for the Ortho-
uplifting rendition of the Mi
dox Movement confirmed
ROBERT A.
Shebeirach, the prayer for
that Jewish teenagers exposed
SKLAR
healing.
to religion in their youth
Editor
These young people, still at a
tend to maintain strong reli-
highly impressionable age,
gious ties throughout their
exemplified
the value of their Jewish
lives. At the same time, we know that
education.
And
they showed how that
adult Jews with little understanding
learning
lends
new
vigor to the North
about their religion are poor role mod-
American
Reform
Movement,
which
els for the cause of Jewish continuity.
traces
its
founding
to
the
Pittsburgh
Which is why I was struck by a ser-
Platform of 1885.
mon that Rabbi Joshua Bennett gave
I've received similar promising
at Temple Israel. He talked about the
reports
about national gatherings of
February national convention in Los
the
Conservative
Movement's United
Angeles for 1,500 Reform high school
Synagogue
Youth
and the Orthodox
students.
Movement's
National
Council of Syn-
"This was a collection of the most
agogue
Youth.
important Reform Jewish leaders in
On the adult front and closer to
the country," Bennett said.
home,
there also is good news.
Surely an exaggeration, I thought,
The
Detroit Jewish community's
but what's he building up to?
most
ambitious
adult education initia-
Then he hammered home his point:
tive
ever,
Seminars
for Adult Jewish
the key to assuring today's Jewish
Enrichment
(SAJE),
has drawn 501
teenagers become tomorrow's Jewish
participants
and
1,302
course registra-
leaders is by tapping their skills, energy

the country's political map will be rad-
ically redrawn to reflect a party
realignment favoring the political cen-
ter.
Thus, the newly emerging coalition
of such visible aspirants as former
Generals Yitzhak Mordechai and
Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, former
Finance Minister Dan Meridor and
former Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo has
opted for the political center. Ex-Gen-
eral Ehud Barak, the Labor Party stan-
dard-bearer, has summoned the irre-
pressible Clinton spinmasters James
Carville and Stanley Greenberg to
help energize Barak's moribund cam-
paign and sharpen its message.
Yet, Barak, too, is trying to position
himself around the political center and
distance himself from the Histadrut
bureaucracy and its socialist
antecedents. Binyamin Netanyahu,

since the dissolution of the Knesset,
has managed to win the Likud pri-
maries and has reinforced his hold on
Likud's rank and file by inducing the
venerable Moshe Arens to replace
Yitzhak Mordechai as defense minis-
ter. Netanyahu has vowed to move
Likud toward the center of the politi-
cal spectrum and is attempting to shed
its "right wing" label. While the candi-
dates' version of what constitutes the
political center may vary, it indu-
bitably denotes a pledge to abide by
the peace agreements and pursue the
peace process under U.S. auspices.
The only maverick is Benny Begin,
a right-wing contender, who will run
on a "nationalist," anti-Oslo and anti-
territorial-concessions platform. He
stands little chance of garnering
enough votes to win the nation's top
office.

Top: Rabbi Joshua Bennett
Bottom: Judah Isaacs

tions in just its first
year. The evening pro-
gram, two three-week
terms concluding next
week, provides an infor-
mal way for Jews of all
streams to rouse their
Jewish soul through 52
midwinter classes at the
Jewish Community Center of Metro-
politan Detroit. SAJE is patterned after
the Atlanta JCC's Jewish U, which
took four years to top 600 students.
SAJE's excellent enrollment this first
year illustrates the thirst for Jewish
knowledge in our community. It's
heartening to see so many, students of
different backgrounds learning togeth-
er —observant, secular, unaffiliated,
intermarried.
Angela King of Bloomfield Hills
has found that she has been able to
touch the hand of God through SAJE
as well as Aish Hatorah and the
Midrasha. "The more I study the
more I know, and the more I know
the more I want to know," said King,
who enrolled in 10 SAJE classes.
"When I'm in class, I feel as if God
is speaking directly to me, drawing me
closer.
"It's a spiritual thing."
While SAJE may be an end in itself
for people with time constraints and
limited interests, I truly hope it
inspires the vast majority of partici-
pants to keep up their Jewish studies.

Netanyahu has proven to be a for-
midable campaigner, likely to retain
the loyalty of the workingman in the
development towns and the settler
population.
In the last election, the so-called
Likud "princes," Begin, Meridor,
Olmert and Landau, could not recon-
cile themselves to the idea that an
upstart "newcomer" could outwit and
outmaneuver them in climbing to the
top of the party hierarchy.
Netanyahu's platform, based on the
twin pledges of giving the Israelis
peace with security and giving his
party a centrist orientation, proved
popular with the majority of the
Israeli electorate. Most Israelis were
favorably impressed with the prime
minister's firm insistence at Wye to
limit the size of the Israeli deploy-
ments, and making such deployments

Judah Isaacs, the Agency for Jewish
Education of Metropolitan Detroit's
interim director, says SAJE is a means,
not an end, to getting people excited
about Jewish education so they make a
commitment to it.
"A core value of Judaism," he said,
"is that learning never stops."
Adult Jews who disavow religious
learning as kids' stuff are making a
foolish blunder. That's because kids
are more likely to mimic, than spurn,
their adult role models.
The Jewish Federation of Metropol-
itan Detroit is well on its way to
endowing a $25-million millennium
fund for Jewish life experiences,
including the immensely important
world of Jewish education..
The fund gives Detroit the frame-
work to become a national crucible for
propelling Jewish education into a
new century — something Federation
would be wise to follow through on.
As Robert Naftaly, co-chairman of
Federation's Alliance for Jewish Educa-
tion, put it: "We could build a model
for the future that shows when a com-
munity works together, it can make
things better. There's absolutely no rea-
son we can't be the catalyst for change."
How well we fulfill our collective
lifelong obligation to learning Jewishly
will determine our future as a people. Fl

To leave a message for Robert
Sklar, please call (248) 354-6060,
ext. 258, or e-mail
rsklar@thejewishnews.com

contingent on Yassir Arafat's compli-
ance with his treaty obligations.
Netanyahu's reported "hard line" did
not sit well with President Clinton
and has soured the relationship
between the two leaders. It is not too
far-fetched to conclude that the presi-
dent will not be unhappy to see
Netanyahu defeated by any of his
centrist" opponents.
However, the president's intrusion
into Israel's election process in support
of any one of the candidates may
boomerang, as it did in 1996 when it
rewarded Netanyahu and hastened
Shimon Peres' political downfall.
Netanyahu's candidacy will loom•
large in the upcoming Israeli elections
if the Jerusalem Post editorial assess-
ment of the prime minister's steward-
ship is shared by a majority of the vot-
ers. "Arguably, Netanyahu has done

"

3/5
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Detroit Jewish News

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