Jewry's Role in
Human Advancement
GALAXY OF NOBEL LAUREATES
Commercial Collapse
Michigan-Israel trade
promotion agency likely to shut.
JULIE WIENER
Staff Writer
L
H
ess than a week after Detroit's
American Zionist Movement
voted to dissolve, another
local Israel-related organiza-
tion announced that it, too, may
close.
In a meeting Monday evening that
drew only 11 members from a mailing
list of more than 300, the Michigan-
Israel Chamber of Commerce decided
to have its board vote next month on
whether or not to dissolve.
Founded in 1984, the
Chamber — one of 15 such
organizations nationwide —
promotes trade between local
companies and companies in
Israel. When successful, cham-
bers introduce potential busi-
ness partners to each other,
educate them about opportuni-
ties and help smooth out some
of the bureaucratic and inter-cultural
challenges of conducting internation-
al business. Some chambers are
financially self-sufficient, generating
necessary funds through membership
dues, but chambers in 12 major
cities — including Cleveland,
Miami, Atlanta, Minneapolis, New
York City, Philadelphia and Boston
— also receive Jewish Federation
dollars, said Chamber President
Harold Rossen.
The Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit recently rejected
the Chamber's request for a three-year
grant of $175,000; the rejection is the
final setback in a chain of problems
dating back to the early 1990s.
In 1993, lack of finances forced the
Chamber to lay off its executive direc-
tor and most of its administrative
staff The scarcity of money and staff
then created a vicious cycle, said
Executive Vice President Shelly
Jackier, noting that these constraints
prevented the chamber from growing
and developing membership.
In late 1997, Jackier, Rossen and
Chairman George Herrera unveiled
a "Five-year plan" to revitalize the
Chamber. That called for increased
membership, financing, networking
and interfacing with other chambers
as well as a heightened relationship
with Federation and the generation
of additional business both for Israel
and the Chamber's members.
However, the plan never got off the
ground. At this week's meeting,
Herrera, Rossen and Jackier — all
looking tired and glum — told the
small group assembled that they were
in a Catch 22. Potential donors said
they would not give to the Chamber
unless the Federation contributed first,
whereas Federation told the Chamber
it would not offer support until the
Chamber first demonstrated it could
solicit funds from individual donors.
Federation pulls
plug on support as
fund-raising wanes.
Making fund-raising harder is the
fact that large businesses — which
need its services less than small busi-
nesses — have been uninterested in
supporting the Chamber, said Jackier.
In addition, she said, the Chamber
lacks an active board because many
Jewish business leaders are already
overextended with commitments to
other Jewish organizations.
Ironically, the Chamber's woes
occur while high-tech industries are
booming both in Israel and
Michigan and while Federation's
Partnership 2000 program is encour-
aging people-to-people exchanges
between residents of Michigan and
Israel's Central Galilee.
In applying for Federation dollars,
the Chamber had hoped to work
closely with Partnership 2000. But
economic development is less a priori-
ty for Partnership 2000 than promot-
ing social ties and strengthening
Jewish identity, said Federation
Executive Vice President Robert
Aronson. He added that the Chamber
has not demonstrated that it can
operate independently and has a rea-
son for operating other than just to
receive Federation dollars."
"For some reason this chamber has
never sufficiently gotten off the
ground, and I don't know why," said
Aronson.
((
The United States has become the world's dominant economic and military
power. Its high tech, pharmaceutical and biomedical industries, bellwethers
of today's global progress, are unequaled. And more money is spent here
on basic scientific research than in any other country. Without question,
our domestic research over the last fifty years has underpinned much of the
world's material gain.
As a matter of national pride, Americans have won more than two-
thirds of Nobel Prizes for Physiology or Medicine during the last two
decades, as well as the great majority of major awards in all scientific
disciplines. As a matter of Jewish pride, a disproportionately large number
of Nobelists--both American and foreign--were of Jewish descent. Meet
but a few:
PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
Physiologist Joseph Erlanger (1874-1965)
employed newly developed electronic equip
merit to co-discover in 1932 that different
fibers within nerve cords performed different
types of function--an unexpected finding.
Another co-discovery by German-born
American biochemist Fritz Lipmann (1899-1986), isolated a highly
important factor he named coenzyme A which helps body cells convert
food into energy. The world famed Pasteur Institute in Paris has long been
a mecca for prize-winning biological research. It was in its laboratories
that Francois Jacob (1920-) determined how certain genes within bacteria
control their activities and hereditary traits, as well as produce enzymes and
RNA.
Salvador Luria (1912-91) also fo-
cused his microscope on bacterial behavior: on
viruses called phage particles which infect
bacteria and may mutate in the process. A
World War Two pilot in the Royal Australian
Air Force, Sir Bernard Katz (191 1-) was an
equally bold investigator of muscle and nerve
function. He joined British research teams
which brilliantly untangled many complexities of nerve transmissions, for
which he was also knighted in 1969.
PHYSICS
Beside two other Stanford University prize-
winning associates stood Jerome Friedman (1930-)
who experimentally confirmed a theory advanced by
physicist Murray Gell Mann a generation before--
that protons and neutrons were composed of quarks,
) the Most fundamental of all subatomic particles. Just
as fundamental to researchers is the tool itself used for
studying such particles, the bubble chamber. For its invention and
development, physics professor Donald Glaser (1926-) was among the
youngest--at age 34--to receive a Nobel in the sciences. Emilio Segre
(1905-89) shared the discovery of the oppositely-charged antiproton before
emigrating from Italy to the U.S. An early student of Enrico Fermi and a
Los Alamos team leader, he also co-discovered plutonium-239 which
powered the two atomic bombs that defeated Japan.
Like many ranking German- and Italian-born scientists under pre-
war Nazi and Fascist rule (including Emilio Segre), physicist James Frank
(1882-1964) eventually sought freedom in the U.S. His investigations of the
structure of matter and the motions of electrons earned a Nobel Prize and
a place in the Manhattan Project where he too helped develop the first
atomic bomb.
Finally, Max Born (1882-1970) was hailed in scientific circles as
a leading authority of his day on quantum mechanics, atomic structure and
the dynamics of matter. In collaboration with Erwin Schrodinger, he
devised mathematical descriptions of the first laws of a new quantum
theory. Born became a British subject also accorded many other
international honors.
-Saul Stadtmauer
Visit many more notable Jews at our website: www.dorledor.org
COMMISSION FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF JEWISH HISTORY
Walter & Lea Field, Founders/Sponsors
Irwin S. Field, Chairperson
Harriet F. Siden, Chairperson
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Detroit Jewish News 11