i ef OFFICIAL SELECTION o *I CANNES 110 V ■ ■ • k ,. TELLURIDE 4•• '*'' TORONTO ‘-t-e ' "LUMINOUS! A - FINE PICTURE." R. Corliss, TIME MAGAZINE - D. Sterna. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR "A HAUNTING DEPICTION of life inside an ultra-Orthodox community." - D. Sontag, NEW YORK TIMES "A RALLYING CRY OF RE VOLT _ same year, Temple Beth El's Leopold Whinier became the first Detroit rabbi to address a Christian congrega- tion in their own church. The chil- dren of Beth El members attended public schools. Members of the congregation were no longer German Jews living in America; they were Americans who happened to be Jewish. Temple Beth El members and Detroit's Jews generally became more active in civic life around the time of the Civil War. Rabbi Adler had cam- paigned actively for abolition, and- several Beth El members fought for the Union, including cemetery war- den Emanuel Wodic. In 1898, when Rabbi Louis Grossman left Detroit, Mayor William C. Maybury gave a public farewell reception in the rabbi's honor. As they became more involved in civic undertakings, Beth El members also worked for such secular philan- thropic organizations as the Protestant Orphan Asylum. Increasingly, howev- er, Jewish aid societies were established. (Frequently, Beth El members supported and led these efforts. The men of Beth El could afford it and the ladies had the time, to paraphrase local Jewish histori- an Robert Rockaway, author of The Jews of Detroit. -In 1882, the Hebrew Ladies Sewing ,., o ciety was formed at Temple Beth El; 'n 1891, Beth El women organized hat is now the National Council of ewish Women/Detroit chapter. Both roups assisted Jewish immigrants. In 1893, Beth El began a "Sunday School" in the afternoons for those who c ould not afford to pay for their chil- dren's religious education, or for those • who belonged to congregations where no religious instruction was offered. Despite these efforts, many of the newer immigrants felt no kinship with the better-established and more "exclu- "If there is antisemitism in the world; then let it not bring upon us the per- verse reaction of self-contempt and of the rejection of the best at our disposal through indifference or flight. Let us fight the anti- semite...Let us keep our own house in order as a Jewish community and in our dealings with our non-Jewish neighbor. Let the three ideals of Judaism — learning, character and piety — shine in our social and business relationships so that we may be the bearers and the exemplars of the best in our Jewish heritage. In an unstable world, we Jews in America, we Jews in Detroit, have a great challenge and a great opportuni- ty. Let us make the most of our privi- leges as Americans and as Jews." Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer, 1945 sive" German Jewish community. The Jews of Temple Beth El had moved from their immigrant roots to being as close to the American mainstream as Jews could be. The new rabbi Beth El hired in 1898 best exemplified this. The Franklin Years Rabbi Leo M. Franklin inherited 136 congregants when the Viennese-born Rabbi Grossman resigned from Beth El. (The Jewish population of Detroit was about 10,000 then.) Franklin preached _ his inaugural sermon on Jan. 27, 1899. In 1900, a semicentennial was orga- nized and a history of the congregation, written by Franklin, was printed. On April 3, 1901, the temple purchased the site for the first of three buildings it would build. Now the Bonstelle Theatre of Wayne State University, the "Eliot Street" building was designed by Albert Kahn, a Temple member and noted architect. As another first, in 1904, Rabbi Franklin abolished the selling of seats in the new sanctuary. Now members could sit wherever they chose. Temple Beth El was the first congregation in the United States to institute this inno- vation. Well into the 1920s, Rabbi Franklin received mail from other con- gregations asking how the "seating experiment" was going. For Rabbi Franklin, it was a symbol of American democracy in the synagogue. As he insisted, there should be no rich man's seat and no poor mans seat before the Almighty. In another effort for "religious democracy," Rabbi Franklin helped organize Detroit's first Interdenominational Thanksgiving Service at the Detroit Opera House in 1902. He also was instrumental in founding the Detroit Roundtable, an interfaith clergy organization now known as the Interfaith Roundtable of the National Conference of Community and Justice. Much of this was Rabbi Franklin's way of defining Reform Judaism as ser- vice to any community, education about Judaism to other communities and faith within his own four walls. By 1919, Rabbi Franklin was president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, helping to shape American Reform Judaism on the national scene. When the new building opened, ser- vices for congregants expanded. Many of the auxiliaries and programs of the present-day Temple Beth El originated in this era. Rabbi Franklin sought to make the temple central to the lives of its members, a constant theme for Beth El's 20th-century rabbis. While atten- dance at services increased, it was not a high proportion of the total member- ship. In 1910, when the congregation celebrated its 60th anniversary, its 422 members made it one of the largest in the city. that comes across loud and clear." - LE MONDE "BEAUTIFUL! A highly polished look at the plight of women within Orthodox Judaism." - S. Schwartz, TIME OUT NEW YORK "DEVASTATING • Carries a sharp sting and an enduring chill" - Jessica Winter, VILLAGE VOICE A FILM BY AMOS GITAI • • `71te excl“.. este t...c te.sne#1,1- DETROIT FILM THEATRE THE DETROIT INSTITUTE OF ARTS FRI. SAT. SUN. 5 6 7 7:00 7:00 4:00 9:30 9:30 7:00 C) 313.833.3237 For ticket and program information, or to receive a complete 2000 DFT film schedule CELEBRATION CONNECTION DIRECTORY 0 in our Classified Section • 0 0