Clockwise from top left.•
Lenna Israetel p ulls
out of her driveway.
Elizabeth Kirshner,
in the JPM pool.
Dee Solomon and attentive listeners
At JVS, Gil Golden prepares for the day.
Cindy Sherman practices
making a bed at JVS.
About 200 other "consumers" learn
cooking, housekeeping and social skills
from 75 staff members.
The Federation allocated $954,228
to the JVS in 1998.
At 11:47 a.m. in the Jimmy Prentis
Morris Building of the Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit in Oak Park, Elizabeth Kirshner,
4, has just spent a half hour in reading
class, where librarian Dee Solomon read
children's books to a captivated Kirshner
and nine others.
Fifteen minutes later, after a quick
change into a bathing suit, we spot
Kirshner happily splashing in the JPM
pool, near Zachary Neistein, 4, whose
mother, Amy, works in the Federation's
Neighborhood Project, headquartered at
the JPM Building. His father, Howard,
is the Federation's director of planning.
Parents send 21 children from infants
to preschoolers to the JPM Building and
3/12
999
22 Detroit Jewish News
145 children to the JCC's D. Dan &
Betty Kahn Building in West
Bloomfield in half-day, extended-hours
and full-day daycare programs.
In 1998, the Federation allocated
$1,549,400 to the JCC.
Iwtms -
tiefti:t
At 2 p.m., our next appointment is at
the Max M. Fisher Federation Building
in Bloomfield Township, the center of
Jewish communal Detroit.
We lumber up the stairs to a second-
floor office where, in a sparse cubicle,
three interns answer phones, earning
college credits.'
Sharri Umansky, 24, is preparing
an educational packet for this year's
Federation-sponsored Women's
Seder on March 24 at Adat Shalom
Synagogue. She's doing the advance
work as part of Project STaR
(Service, Training and Research in
Jewish Communal Development), a
two-year graduate program at the
University of Michigan's School of
Social Work.
Commuting about three days a
week from Ann Arbor to the
Federation, she spends the rest of her
week taking classes at U-M. Since the
program started 10 years ago, 39 stu-
dents have completed Project STaR;
seven more will graduate in May.
Everywhere we look, Federation
employees greet us with smiles, and
praise for the people they work with and
for the "generosity of the Jewish people
of Detroit." We know they mean what
they say, and d we know, by looking at the
numbers, it's probably true, but they say
it so often it comes off like a sales pitch.
tirr CW
On the way to Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit in Farmington
Hills, we are running late. The roads
are still slick and the traffic is, as
always, congested.
We get the feeling that if the
Federation was in charge of the
roads, with the backing and generos-
ity of the Jewish people of Detroit,
there would be no slick roads, no
traffic and no potholes. And it
would be sunny and 70 degrees.
Always.
kti A L tNiR
It's 3:10 p.m., and with a little more
than three weeks to go, Bryan
Robbins, a 14-year-old Hillel eighth
grader, has just left Torah class and is
now practicing lines from Annie Get
Your Gun with classmate Monica
Woll, 14, of West Bloomfield, in the
music room.
They have been students together
since kindergarten. Monica has an
older sister who's a recent Hillel
graduate; Bryan has a younger sister
going to Hillel. Bryan tells us the
school offers a good base of Jewish
knowledge and values that he will
take with him to high school.