JNEditorials

Editorials and Letters to the Editor are posted and archived on JN Online:
www.detroitjewishnews.com

Lifelines For Learning

Ifi

any of us used to feel ful-
filled if our children
learned Jewishly, even if
we didn't.
But times are changing.
Today, more and more
adults are yearning to satis-
fy their thirst to learn. That
satisfaction is coming in a
variety of ways. In that
variety lies the genesis of
growing interest in adult
Jewish education here in
metro Detroit.
Lunch-and-learns have surged in
popularity. Typically, they offer engag-
ing speakers over lunch in informal set-
tings. Ohr Somayach is Orthodox
based, but its lunch-and-learns, by far
the most popular, attract participants
from all streams of Judaism. Yad Ezra,
the kosher food pantry, is one of the
newest lunch-and-learn hosts; through
it, local rabbis explore topical ethical
issues while pantry workers share their
community mission.
The Conservative movement's Eilu v'
Eilu, the Agency for Jewish Education of
Metropolitan Detroit (AJE), Wayne State
University's Cohn-Haddow Center for
Judaic Studies, Greater Detroit Hadassah
and The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
are some of the others that have cast
important lifelines for learning. Several
synagogues, schools and rabbis also have
built reputations for nurturing learning -
among adults.
Aish HaTorah, which dedicates its
new downtown Birmingham center

.

IN FOCUS

from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, March
12, strives especially to make learning
more relevant and enriching for
young, unaffiliated adults. It does so
through programs and religious ser-
vices designed to be welcoming and
interactive, yet instructive
and inspiring.
Perhaps the brightest star
in the firmament of adult
learning is SAJE. These Semi-
nars for Adult Jewish Enrich-
ment are co-sponsored by the
Jewish Federation of Metro-
politan Detroit, the AJE, the Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan
Detroit and the Jewish News. Individual
enrollment has topped 1,000 and.class
registrations have exceeded 2,500 over
the two years of SAJE.
Common threads in these education-
al patchworks are captivating topics and
non-threatening experiences. Boring,
deceitful lessons are quickly exposed for .
what they are.
To be spiritually uplifted is an over-
riding-goal, certainly — but it's not a
prerequisite to success. The desire to
savor nuggets of knowledge acquired
through learning about what it means
to be Jewish is the result that matters
most.
The finest reward of adults who learn
Jewishly is the example they set for our
children — tomorrow's torchbearers for
Jewish identity, continuity and leader-
ship. If we're not up to honing our
understanding of who we are as a peo-
ple, why should they? ❑

Summer
Fare

At right, Katy
Burstein of Hadas-
sah's Young Judaea
chats with Mackenzie
White, 14, and her
father Arthur of West
Bloomfield at the
11th annual "Super
Summers for Kids: A
Camp and Activities
Fair" last Sunday in
Beverly Hills. Below,
Jessica Hudspeth of Tamarack Camps at her display. The Jewish
Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit Day Camp was among
the 81 camp programs showcased.

`Poor, Poor Me'

ow isn't it grand that
it took a Holocaust
denier to bring
Adolf Eichmann's
"memoirs" into public view.
And what a self-pitying, self-
excusing picture they paint of
this "cog" who so neatly and
efficiently dispatched to their
deaths millions of human
beings whose crime was sim-
ply that they were Jews.
"My position is the same
as that of millions of others
who had to obey," Eich-
mann wrote. "The differ-
ence is simply that I had a
much more difficult task to

N

Related story: page 17

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A close view of the jailhouse diary of Nazi
leader Adolf Eichmann — pictured at the -
Israeli state archive department in Jerusalem on
Feb. 28.

perform in carrying out my orders."
Yeah, sure. Some difference.
Eichmann wrote the 1,100-page
document in the year between his
arrest and his hanging in 1961. It was
obviously a self-serving account,
intended to persuade a court to be
lenient toward him. Israeli archivists
kept it locked up, saying they hoped
to make it public eventually in a
scholarly form that would put his
words in proper historical perspective.
But the well-publicized suit brought
by.Holocaust denier David Irving in
London against Emory University his-

torian Deborah Lipstadt persuaded the
government to make the writings pub-
lic now
It was a good decision. Only fools
could fail to recognize the timorous
morality of Eichmann's self portrait.
"I was obedient to the leadership of
the German state," he wrote in a
meticulous, tight script, "because we
were told and believed that Ger-
many had enemies intent on
destroying it."
"I saw hell, death and the Devil,"
he concedes. "I had to witness the
insanity of annihilation."
And what did he have to say of
those who experienced that annihila-
tion? Nothing. ❑

T

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