COLLEGE
STUDENTS!

You Can Receive

'2500
Towards a Year's Study at a

Leading University in Israel

Through the Harry 5.1 and Sarah Laker
Israel Youth Scholarship Fund

APPLY NOW!

Now Celebrating 23 Years

If you live in the Metropolitan
Detroit area, if you are
currently attending a college
or university in the continental
United States, and if you have
applied to a school of higher
learning in Israel, you can
win a full year of study at a
leading university in Israel!

For application form
or details phone
(248) 851-5100

or write to address below

LAST DAY
TO APPLY IS
MAY 14, 1999

Harry
and Sarah Laker Israel Youth Scholarship Fund
Co-Sponsored by the Beth Achim Religious School of Adat Shalom Synagogue

29901 Middlebelt / Farmington Hills, MI 48334 / (248) 851-5100

.Happy Passover
To Our
Customers
and
Friends

GLASS AND PLASTICS

22223 Telegraph Rd. (South of 9 Mile)

3/26
1999

12 Detroit Jewish News

248-353-5770

Search Nearly Over •

New Jewish high school expects to
have a headmaster by April.

JULIE WIENER
Staff Writer

A

ccording to its chairman,
Detroit's newest Jewish high
school expects to hire a
headmaster by the end of
this month, "God willing."
The Jewish Academy of
Metropolitan Detroit, a day school
being organized primarily by
Conservative Movement leaders and
Hillel Day School parents, has been
actively seeking an executive for over a
year. And it has not been easy.
"There are a lot of opportunities
for educators and not enough of them
to go around," said Jewish Academy of
Metropolitan Detroit Chairman
Jeffrey Garden.
The academy's search committee
has evaluated more than 40 candidates
and brought eight into Detroit for
interviews. Late last week, the com-
mittee presented its top choice for
headmaster to the board and if this
works out, we'll make an offer," said
Garden, in an interview beforehand,
in which he declined to provide fur-
ther details about the candidate.
Garden was not available for comment
this week.
The offer would be the school's
first. Although Garden would not
state the salary range the school is pre-
pared to lay out, he said it would be
competitive.
He also said the school has some
back-up choices in mind should the
candidate decline the position.
Fueled by studies showing adoles-
cence to be a critical time in cement-
ing Jewish identity, as well as a grow-
ing enthusiasm for Jewish education,
new high schools like the
Jewish Academy are prolif-
erating throughout the
United States. And the
supply of qualified head-
masters is not keeping up
with demand.
"Since there have been
very few day high schools
in the non-Orthodox com-
munity, there has not been
a system to prepare people
for such jobs," said Dr.
Paul Flexner, director of
human resources develop-

CC

) 7

ment for the Jewish Education Service
of North America. "There is not a
career ladder leading to that, and no
one until recently has been training
people to lead day high schools."
JESNA assists communal Jewish
institutions, including nondenomina-
tional day schools, in their executive
searches. It also recently started a task
force to address the shortage of Jewish
educational administrators. Flexner
said that most schools do find head-
masters eventually and that many new c__/
N
schools, such as Cleveland's Pardes
School, are hiring Jewish candidates
with backgrounds in general, rather
than Jewish, education.
Detroit's Jewish Academy, in the
planning stages for more than two
years, will offer a dual curriculum of
secular and Judaic studies. Last March,
the United Jewish Foundation of
Metropolitan Detroit promised it a
$750,000 grant to be paid out over
three years, starting one year before
the school's scheduled September
2000 opening.
The Jewish Academy expects to
enroll graduates of congregational
schools as well as day schools, and
from a broad spectrum of the commu-
nity. However, it will limit admissions ci/\
to students who are Jewish by the tra-
ditional "matrilineal descent" defini-
tion.
Many recently opened high schools,
such as the New Jewish High School
in Waltham, Mass., and the Atlanta
New Jewish High School, recognize
"patrilineal descent," or the view
espoused by the Reform Movement
that a child of a Jewish father and gen- t--`
tile mother can be considered Jewish if
raised in the Jewish faith. 0

New Job

Heidi Christein, left,
has succeeded Sharon
Alterman as director
of the Leonard Simons
Jewish Community
Archives, established in
1991 to document the
legacy of the Detroit
Jewish community.

