Assessing The Mission

Jewish Community Council leaders

HARRY KIRSBAUM Staff - Writer

It he Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan
Detroit has long called itself the voice of the
Jewish community.
At its inception in the 1930s, it organized
small Jewish groups and businesses to fight anti-Semitism,
evolving into a lobbying agency in Detroit and Lansing for
laws to protect minorities against discrimination in hiring,
education and housing. It then stood up for civil rights, the
plight of oppressed Jews around the world and ecumenical
movements. In the early part of this decade, it played a key
role in helping many thousands of Russian-Jewish emigres
build new lives in the Detroit area.
Now, however, as issues become less urgent, the Council's
actions are much less dramatic and visible.
In the past year, only two of four meetings it arranged to
reach out to Jews on the fringes of the Jewish community
drew more than a couple dozen people. A drive announced
two years ago to be part of the rebuilding of the neighbor-

Harry Kirsbaum can be reached at (248) 354-6060, ext. 244,
or by e-mail at hkirsbaum@thejewishnews.com

6/4
1999

hood around Sinai Hospital
in Detroit has just gotten off
the ground. When the few
anti-Semitic incidents do
happen, the Michigan Region
of the Anti-Defamation
League takes the call.
The Council continues to court
Michigan legislators and staff, but its
legislative director says.the most
important issues she tackled during
this slow year in Lansing was a genet-
ic testing bill that might affect
Ashkenazi Jews and a bill exempting
Orthodox Jews from autopsy.
Lacking an urgent cause in recent
years and with a firmly entrenched
Jewish population — one with
increasing wealth, power and govern-
ment representation — is there still a
need for the Jewish Community

ia

a at at: :a

The Council is a nearly

62-year-old umbrella group

through which community

agencies originally worked

to combat anti-Semitism.

Over the years, that role

has changed several times.

