JNEditorials
Editorials and Letters to the Editor are posted and archived on JN Online:
www.detroitjewishnews.com
Validating Campus Outreach
B
irthright Israel — the popular, new
national program that provides free
trips to Israel for college students
who have never been there —
already has proven effective in strengthening
Jewish identity on many campuses. The exu-
berance of participants has exceeded even the
most optimistic expectations.
But a newly announced, Michigan-based
Jewish program for college students possesses
even more potential, although clearly in ways
not as dramatic.
Through the generosity of a former Detroit
couple that endowed it with $1 million, the
Bethea and Irwin Green College Life Fund is cal-
ibrated to connect Jewish students with Jewish
experiences on their campus. The idea is to make
Judaism something more relevant, touchable and
enriching — for example, holding a statewide
student leadership retreat; bringing Israeli college
students to Michigan campuses; recruiting and
training Jewish communal professionals — as
opposed to something dryly abstract. The 11
Michigan campuses served by Hillel: The Foun-
dation for Jewish Campus Life will help make
the connections.
And those connections are crucial — make
no mistake about that.
Lose students who aren't observant, affiliat-
ed or communally active while in college and
the odds of losing them forever to the lures of
full assimilation, intermarriage and apathy go
up dramatically.
That's why what the Greens have laid the
groundwork for is so exciting. Their fund
potentially reaches out to a core group of not
only future Jewish leaders, but also future Jew-
ish parents, whose influence on future genera-
tions is boundless.
Amid the excitement generated by the Greens'
gift, questions resonate about how grants will be
awarded, used and tracked. Much of the burden
will fall to the Hillel leadership — and rightly so.
IN FOCUS
Related story: page 16
We
Lea
It's important to note
that this college life fund
was created through the
Millennium Campaign
for Detrcit's Jewish Future. Leading that drive,
which is within reach of its $50 million goal in
less than two years, are the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit and its real
estate/banking arm, the United Jewish Foun-
dation, as well as the Jewish Community Cen-
ter of Metropolitan Detroit.
That means Federation — Detroit Jewry's
communal guardian — must also be held
accountable. Its chief role in this regard is to
monitor what our Hillels are doing on campus
and measure their effectiveness. In doing so,
Federation should solicit not only administra-
tive feedback but also, and perhaps more
importantly, student impressions.
Involving Jewish collegians early on, and kee
ing them involved, will be no easy task. That's
why students' input — whether supportive or
critical — must always be paramount.
It's encouraging that more local teenagers
are choosing to learn, as evidenced by rising
day, afternoon and supplemental school enroll-
ment and continued interest in teen missions
to Israel. Many local adult education programs
are bursting with new students.
While some synagogues hold campus events
during the year, Hillel remains the central
communal address for the vast majority of
Jewish collegians. In one generous sweep, the
Greens have set the stage for making Hillel
more vigorous than ever before.
It's up to us — the Detroit Jewish commu-
nity led by Federation — to assure the curtain
rises on a fresh, even daring, world of Jewish
opportunity for a too-often-overlooked age
group that's especially vulnerable to irreversible
non-Jewish influences.
❑
Michelangelo And Me
The student art gallery at Congregation Shaarey Zedek Beth
Hayeled Nursery School in West Bloomfield opened Feb. 10
with the work of 20 young artists. The gallery is part of the
school's new arts curriculum. Teachers Shelley Meltzer, Cheryl
Wertheimer, Rosanne Rosenberg and Lisa Zeldes included a
unit on great artists of the past. The preschoolers learned about
the lives and artistic styles of Pollock, Picasso, Michelangelo,
Monet, Matisse, Seu-
rat, Chagall, O'Ke-
effe, Faberge, Warhol
and Britto. Above,
Allison Swimmer, 4,
David Attenson, 5,
and Cecily Myers, 5,
all of West Bloom-
field, celebrate the art
they helped create.
Left, Jared Roten-
berg, 4, of West
Bloomfield shows his
masterpiece to par-
ents Terri and Mark.
issing The Point
decision by federal prosecutors to seek the
death penalty for white supremacist Buford
Furrow Jr. is undoubtedly good politics.
Heinous crimes, like his alleged totally
unprovoked murder of a Filipino postal carrier,
deserve strong punishment.
But in this case, the demand for execution seems
more likely to confuse public understanding of what
Furrow did than it is to deter future hate crimes.
We don't mean to minimize the value of Joseph
Ileto's life and tragic death, but the Los Angeles murder
wouldn't have grabbed national headlines had it not
been the sequel to Furrow's shooting of five people at
the North Valley Jewish Community Center in subur-
ban Granada Hills an hour earlier. What made the case
A
Related story:page 19
exceptional was the hate-filled attack on young, totally
vulnerable children who were made targets for no rea-
son save that they were at a Jewish facility.
By asking that Furrow be put to death for killing
Ileto, the prosecution is, no doubt, trying to coerce
an early plea bargain on all the charges from the
Aug. 10 shootings. As a legal tactic, throwing the
book at someone often persuades him to plead
guilty in return for a lesser punishment, in this case
presumably a life sentence without parole.
But the problem is that the tactic takes the focus
away from the man's proclaimed motive — to send "a
wake-up call to America to kill Jews" — and mires it in
the wide debate over whether and when capital punish-
mentis appropriate. That's a thorny issue and its not
likely to be advanced any by this case.
While individual states have been busy dusting off
their electric chairs and sharpening the needles for
lethal injections, the national government really hasn't
been in the death-penalty business for nearly 30 years.
So the Justice Department decision smacks of some
grandstanding to make itself seem tougher on hate
crimes than its past performance would show.
The shooting at the Jewish Community Center
was the horrendous act of a man made mad by the
hatemongers of Aryan supremacy. It should be pun-
ished for what it was. Asking for the death penalty
in this case blurs the issue rather than clarifies it.
❑
2/25
2000
29