JNEditorials

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

Tapestry Of Giving

A

n out-of-towner planning to
move here found the Jewish Fed-
eration of Metropolitan Detroit's
Web site. He then wrote the
organization, Detroit Jewry's communal and
financial guardian, asking how he could
make a first-time contribution so he could
feel part of our community.
Why should he have trusted Federation
to allocate his money fairly? Because a Jew-
ish community that demands accountability
drives Federation's Annual Campaign. This
year's climax to the fund-raising, Campaign
Countdown, runs April 9-12.
Since 1926, Jewish Detroit, through the
Campaign, has stood sentry over those in
need. The Campaign, serving and supported
by Jews at all levels of observance and
knowledge, is one of the last inter-locking
threads in the tapestry of Jewish Detroit.
More than 150 volunteers play a part in the
allocation process. Professionals help set pri-
orities. Lay leaders provide oversight. Federa-
tion governors have ultimate say.
With approximately 96,000 Jews,
Detroit is the 12th largest Jewish commu-
nity in North America. Yet in per-capita
giving, it ranks third. In sheer number of
donors, it ranks fifth, a phenomenon that
resonates with the spirit of tikkun olam, of
repairing the world..
This year's Campaign goal is $30 mil-
lion, up $400,000. Federation eyes a
donor total of 16,000, up nearly 900 —
solid evidence of confidence in what the
Campaign is all about.
The anticipated local/overseas split
remains about even, in deference to our
calling as a universal people to reach out

IN FOCUS

Related stool: page 52

to needy Jews everywhere. Local spending
priorities include Jewish education, spiri-
tual renewal, resettlement, eldercare ser-
vices, family crises and disability care.
New donors are especially critical. So
far this year, they total 1,065, barely off-
setting the 838 lost through death, moves
and other reasons.
Giving more than the year before serves
many purposes. For example, it compress-
es the three-week waiting list for seniors in
need °Ades and increases the number of
camperships, afternoon school scholar-
ships and rent assistance checks that are
available. It also offsets the fluctuating
benefits drawn by those in our communi-
ty who are most vulnerable.
The Campaign doesn't do all this
alone. It meshes with local-funding from
the United Jewish Foundation, the Mil-
lennium Campaign for Detroit's Jewish
Future and the Irving A. Rubin Jewish
Community Trust for the Elderly.
Amid the Campaign's perennial success,
we as a community must continue to ask
tough questions about how allocations are
made, why percentages go up or down,
why some services land more funding and
others less, and who assures that money is
spent as allocated. Overhead is generally
less than 7 percent, comparatively low
among nonprofits.
We would survive without Federation's
Annual Campaign. But let there be no mis-
take — we're richer as a community, and
enjoy a better quality of life, because of it. ❑

Simply Fun

The accent was on gamesman-
ship at Haman's Hide-a-way
and Mordechai's Marvelous
Magical Museum, otherwise
known as Adat Shalom Syna-
gogue's Purim carnival on
March 19. Above, Morad
Leeal, 14, of Farmington Hills
runs the dart booth as Laura
Goldberg, 4, of West Bloom-
field gives it a shot and mom,
Dana, watches. Right, Jaclyn
Nagel, 4, of Farmington Hills
pops her head from what the carnies called an exhaust vent.

<n„

Trading Jews For Caviar

:e

arlier this week, the Clinton State Depart-
ment announced that it was easing its 18-
year-old ban on travel by U.S. citizens to
Libya. The agency found that our citizens
would not be at particular risk of life and limb in
Muammar Qaddafi's north African nation.
That Qaddafi has repeatedly launched the most vir-
ulent and gratuitous verbal attacks on Israel did not,
apparently, figure into the decision-making process
ultimately accepted by Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright. Besides, department officials hastened to
murmur to the press, Tripoli must be coming around.
The proof was that it had invited a top Israeli minister
to make an official visit later this year.
The Clinton Administration did not make a big
production of its shift on Libya, having learned a
lesson perhaps from the attention it got a month
earlier, when it decided that it would be okay to let
. Iran sell some of its products in the United States. It
lifted the embargo on such crucial commodities as

Persian rugs, yogurt, pistachios and caviar.
That was described as a modest gesture, intended
to nudge open the door toward a resumption of
more "normal" relations with what had been, under
the Shah, an ally. The country is now run some of
the time by a "reformist," democratically elected
president and the rest of the time by an ultra-reac-
tionary council of Muslim clerics. State sniffed the
winds of change and detected, one guesses, the
fumes of cheap Iranian petroleum to be sold in this
country where the idea of paying more than $1.25
for a gallon of gas seems to threaten a drivers' rebel-
lion before the November election.
Like the Libyan opening, the accommodation to
Iran is said to be no more than an attempt to test
the waters, to see if we can find ways to get along.
No human-rights preconditions were apparently set
for this deal; it is not clear that they were even con-
sidered, either in Teheran or Washington.
We have long given up expecting this administra-

tion to put principle, or even consistency, above the
practice of compromise in its foreign policies. It
merrily sells the latest rockets to Egypt and
weapons-grade computers to China while attacking
Israel for selling China outdated arms technologies.
But even if it doesn't identify- its priorities with those
of Israel, it might have shown a touch of human con-
cern for the 13 Iranian Jews who are about to go on
trial on trumped-up charges of spying against the Mus-
lim state. It might have reminded the regime that some
simple steps, like giving the defendants a lawyer and a
public trial, could be a useful step in proving its desire
to be seen as a "normal" nation.
Instead, it settled for pistachios.
We are glad to know that, should we now devel-
op an urge to while away some time in the sooks of
Tripoli, our government thinks we will be safe from
the terrorists. If that proves not to be the case, the
government can at least draw on its stockpile of Bel-
uga to trade for our release. What a deal. ❑

IN

4/7

2000

41

