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Editorials and Letters to the Editor are posted and archived on JN Online:

www.detroitjewishnews.com

Rewards For Excellence

A

$5 million gift that will provide
tuition help for students in Detroit's
Jewish day schools should be a wel-
come incentive for our congrega-
tional schools as well.
The grant from Lois and Dr. Milton Shiff-
man, whose generosity toward education has
long been exemplary, is a strong reminder that
striving for excellence will be recognized and
rewarded. Congregational schools that hold
themselves to the same high standards to
which day schools aspire will be assured of
community support.
Clearly, both kinds of schools are needed.
Some national experts say the education
that students get from day schools is a more
lasting guarantee of continued Jewish identity
and community participation than is the train-
ing that students get in the few hours a week
at a synagogue-sponsored school. From that
view, they argue, Jewish continuity is best
served by enlarging the day schools and, gen-
tly, turning a back on the other training.
That would be a mistake. From a pragmatic
view, congregational schools fit the desires of
parents who don't want their kids trained more
rigorously than they were. And there's no theo-
retical reason why these schools can't have the
same lasting impact as day schools.
Millions of Jews have been trained in con-
gregational settings. In our community, con-
gregational schools now train 5,000 boys and
girls every year, more than the 2,500 enrolled
in the K-12 programs of the five-day schools.
The effectiveness of the congregational

IN FOCUS

school is, at the core, a question of quality and
commitment. When the schools are staffed
with enthusiastic, well-prepared professional
staff — and when the students and parents
actively reinforce the importance of the train-
ing — the congregational schools can instill a
deep love of Torah.
But it is also clear that for some, the mod-
ern congregational experience is often little
more than a cram course for a bar or bat mitz-
vah, the importance of which is as much social
as it is spiritual.
The first step to changing that lies with the
family. The second step is for the movements
to commit to training and recruiting good
teachers who know how to make the two to
four hours some of the most exciting, involv-
ing ones of the week.
The Jewish Federation's Millennium Cam-
paign for Detroit's Jewish Future includes
plans for a $10 million endowment for the
congregational schools. No money has been
raised yet toward that ambitious goal.
It is unlikely, of course, that a single donor
will come forward with a gift for congregation-
al schools that would match the Shiffmans'
generosity to day-school education. We believe
strongly in the need to support all the streams
of our faith, but realistically, the individual
congregational schools are more likely to find
help from individual members.
That help will come because philanthropists
will recognize which schools are doing outstand-
ing jobs and then give to make sure that a splen-
did congregational tradition continues. LI

Coming Of Age

N

ext Wednesday, the fifth day of the
Hebrew month Iyar, Jews around the
world will mark the 51st Israel Inde-
pendence Day, or Yom HaAtzmaut. It
falls the week after Yom HaShoah (Holocaust
Memorial Day), reminding us that Israel was and
remains a triumphant answer to a world once
stunningly indifferent to the massive extermina-
tion effort of the Jewish people.
After last year's jubilee, this Yom HaAtzmaut
can seem anti-climactic. But it should mark
renewed reflection, rededication and celebration
about the complicated place we call the Jewish
homeland and our relationship to it.
Working against this is a healthy Israeli
economy, a strong Israeli military, and Israel's
increasingly discordant religious and political
voices. Each makes us want to shy away from
active involvement in helping with the Jewish
state's still pressing needs.
This would be understandable, but painfully
misguided. Israel's needs are integrally linked to
our own. True, we are slow to recognize that
there is a new Israel today. For decades, we ideal-

ized our relationship with the old Israel, project-
ing onto it romantic myths that were not sustain-
able, never realizable. But our fate as Jews is inex-
tricably tied to that of Jews there, and vice versa.
Indeed, Jewish identity in Israel — as well
as at home — can no longer be taken for
granted. Only together can we crystallize what
it means to be part of the Jewish people in the
next century. To have a stake in this enterprise
called Israel — people and state — we can and
should continue to contribute through the tra-
ditional and time-honored channels of the
Jewish National Fund, Israel Bonds, Hadassah
and Jewish federations. But myriad other out-
lets for involvement exist, from universities to
museums to projects teaching tolerance and
democracy. Find one, any one, to suit your
needs. Host more Israelis in our community
and expose them to pluralistic Jewish life. Plan
a family visit to Israel as well.
All of this can have a profound impact on
our understanding of being Jewish. That is
something we can neither take for granted nor
from which should we back away. P1

Senior
Seder

Yeshiva Beth Yehu-
dah instructor
Rabbi Yerachmiel
Rabin of Oak Park
and six of his chil-
dren led a Passover
seder March 31,
using an original
Haggadah, for 55 residents and patients of the Marvin and Betty
Danto Family Health Care Center in West Bloomfield. He's part-
time programming rabbi at Danto. Below, Shalom Rabin, 6,
helps Libby Partrite. Above, Rabbi Rabin, with Frieda Susskind.

LETTERS

Need To Recall
Is Strong

A survivor still lives with the
Shoah, even 54 years after the
liberation. Here are some of
my thoughts on how and why
we should all remember that
horrible time.
As youngsters, we learned
that we were driven out of
Israel for our sins and lost the
Beit HaMikdash, the Holy
Temple. According to some
Jews, the Shoah is also attrib-
utable to Jewish impiety. I
find this inconceivable.
In the camps, we davened;
we prayed, constantly. We
cried out to God. Who else
was there? Could I cry out to
my fellow prisoners? Could I
cry out to the SS guard? We,
some of us, had to talk to
someone, some force, to God.
So we davened (prayed) while

we stood, marched or worked.
These were not dry prayers,
but purposeful, to give us sus-
tenance. We prayed and dis-
cussed Talmud and these
things distracted us from our
miseries.
I believe the Shoah should
be commemorated by every-
body, Klal Yisroel, because the
murderers made no distinctions
between Jews. It is regrettable
that some of my fellow Jews do
not see this.
Both Yom HaShoah and
Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Inde-
pendence Day) should be
observed by everyone. Had
there been reason to celebrate
the second of these days in
1933, there may not have been
need to remember the first.
There is a text in Rashi
that reads, "When hell breaks
loose, it does not distinguish
between good and bad." In

4/16
1999

Detroit Jewish News

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