Dean Silver, Vladimir & The Entire Staff Of
Varsity Lincoln Mercury Extend Best Wishes
To The Community For A Happy,
Healthy New Year!

ing for work as a religious school
teacher. Confident she'll be hired
somewhere, the Judaic studies and
sociology major will spend Yom
Kippur at the congregation that
engages her to teach.
Gordon's High Holiday experiences
have taught her a lesson worthy of the
Wizard of Oz. "Now that I've been
away," she says, "I have found that I
do want to live near family. I want
[my] kids to grow up near grandpar-
ents. I want to be close. Family is the
draw."
Jetting home wasn't an option for
Dani Barak, who spent last year in
Jerusalem on the United Synagogue
for Conservative Judaism's Nativ pro-
gram. He was worried about spending
New Year's away from his large,
extended family, many of whom get
together each Friday night for
Shabbat dinner. "The High Holidays
are an even bigger version of our
(weekly 30-person) dinners," Barak
says, "and before I went away I
thought it was going to be very hard.
But in Israel, while you don't forget
your family, it is replaced by so much
more ... It is something to fit in that
empty spot where your family is miss-
ing."
Barak remembers the holidays in
Israel as "a sort of a rush. All the holi-
days — Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur,
Sukkot and Simchat Torah — tum-
bled together [in this wonderful blur].
We went from one to the next.
"On Yom Kippur, the streets were
completely empty. As we walked to
shul for Kol Nidre it was unlike
anything I'd ever seen in my whole
life. There were no cars, the traffic
lights were simply blinking yellow.
It was eerie the way the whole coun-
try shut down and with that shut-
ting down came the connection to
the country and to Judaism that sur-
rounded you in a way you just don't
get here.
Barak, who is now a freshman at
the Jewish Theological Seminary's
Albert List College of Judaic Studies,
hopes to recreate in New York a bit of
what he experienced in Israel.
The irony that he finds himself in
dealing with this High Holidays sea-
son is that his definition of home has
shifted. Last spring, as his plane began
to circle Detroit before landing, Dani
Barak recalls that he began to cry as
he looked down at the city lights of
his hometown. "At that point I
thought to myself, 'I want to go
home'" and I realized that home was-
n't Michigan." II

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Detroit Jewish News

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