Editorials
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A National Birthright
T
he Michigan school vouchers proposal
no doubt will be this fall's hottest
election issue. So Jewish voters, who
influence elections far beyond their
population percentage because of a greater ten-
dency to vote, should take heed.
Jewish education — whether rooted in
preschool, day school, synagogue classrooms,
campus life, adult learning or a supplemental
program — clearly provides the base that
strengthens Jewish identity and sustains our
4,000-year-old heritage.
But many more Jews are enrolled in public
schools than Jewish schools. And most of the Jew-
ish immigrants who helped build our nation in the
early 20th century — including Jewish Detroiters
— were educated in public schools.
It's the public schools, open to everyone and a
national birthright, that define America by
securing the democratic freedoms that we, as a
nation, so cherish.
Time will tell how widespread Jewish support is
for the school voucher proposal before the Nov. 7
vote. Jewish voters need to decide, among other
things, if greater funding for day schools —
whether from vouchers or tuition tax credits —
adversely affects the funding of, and by extension
the quality of, our public schools. We'll reserve edi-
torial judgment until closer to Election Day.
Meanwhile, we're quick to sing the praises of
public school settings. They typically are ethnic,
academic, religious, racial and special-needs melt-
ing pots. They vary from district to district because
of many factors, but they nonetheless are micro-
cosms of America. They give everyone a chance to
Cover story: page 6
IN FOCUS
become educated, productive citizens.
Judaism teaches that to study Torah is to absorb
divinely inspired lessons. Jewish learning is a pillar
of what binds Jews as a people.
But placing a high value on education isn't
uniquely Jewish. More than a century ago, Ameri-
can educator Horace Mann rallied for public sup-
port and control of the quickly growing network of
frontier schools. The New Englander aroused last-
ing grass-roots interest in better-trained teachers
and a stronger basic curriculum.
In Mann's time (1796-1859), when public
education was in its infancy and agriculture the
leading source for jobs, the rudiments of learn-
ing typically were limited to reading, writing and
arithmetic.
To achieve security in today's fiercely compet-
itive world, however, we need a more rigorous
approach to education. Meeting that challenge is
the collective responsibility of the public, private
and religious schools.
Jewish students number more than 2,000 in
Detroit's day schools and more than 5,000 in .
our congregational schools. The vast majority of
congregational school students also attend public
school;
Rabbi Shmuel Irons of the Kotel Institute in Oak Park dis-
The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit's
cusses spirituality and end-of-life issues with a group of
Millennium Campaign for Detroit's Jewish Future
Israeli hospice professionals May 25 at the Max M. Fisher
is destined, in a big way, to bolster operational and
Federation Building in Bloomfield Township. He explored
scholarship support for our day, congregational and - the concept of hospice and its roots in Jewish tradition. The
supplemental schools.
group of seven staff members of the Milton and Lois Shiff-
The Jewish community, however, can't weaken
man Home Hospice in the Valleys, located in Israel's central
its ties to the public school system — in a voucher,
Galilee, spent May 22-26 touring the Hospice of Michigan
or voucher-less, environment. Our community's
in Southfield, Detroit Medical Center and Applebaum Jew-
history has been to tend to our own, but always
ish Community Campus in West Bloomfield in search of
with a caring eye toward others.
insight into hospice care. The visit was under the umbrella
We must not let the voucher debate change
of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit's Partner-
that.
ship 2000 program.
Fueling Ideas
❑
Intimidating Talk
T
oday, when I see Barak's plan and I hear the
voices around me, I say that if; God forbid,
he carries out this dangerous plan, his days
could be numbered. .
Shimon Riklin, the leader of the Next Generation
settlers' organization, insisted that he wasn't threatening
Prime Minister Ehud Barak, just describing the settlers'
political feelings as details of a vast land-for-peace deal
leaked from the talks between Barak and Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Yeah, right.
We know incitement when we see it. And such
incendiary talk can too easily translate into actual
violence. It happened in 1995, when Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down for his advocacy of
a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. For a
more recent example, we need only to recall how the
demonstrations that Arafat arranged last month to
mark the nakba, the "catastrophe" of Israel's 1967
West Bank victory, became spontaneously one of the
most violent clashes in years.
The rhetoric of violence may play well in the
short term, but its long-term consequences are vastly
damaging. Emotional violence begets physical vio-
lence from which no one is a winner.
The passion of the settlers has different sources.
Many have come with government encouragement
and economic subsidies. Others have risked their
fortunes — and sometimes put their lives at risk —
because they believe that Judea and Samaria are
rightfully part of a greater Israel. Still others believe
that keeping all the land is not an issue of peace and
security, but a religious/messianic requirement.
Some just don't want to give up the homes and lives
they cherish so greatly.
Regardless, it is incredibly hard for these settlers
to accept that the national (and international) deci-
sion has gone against them and that the vast majori-
ty of the land must fall again into Arab hands.
Barak says the settlers should be glad that the
negotiations will grant permanent West Bank status
to 80 percent of them; the settlers describe that as a
glass (way more than) half empty.
But the passions are no excuse for physical
threats. The settlers had their opportunity to use the
political process, and for a long time they prevailed.
That time is over. The national consensus has
formed, and Barak is a reflection of that agreement,
not the cause of it.
We have long deplored the Palestinians' use of
school texts that preach hatred of Jews and that
deliberately incite antisemitic passions. They harm
the Palestinian children, whose future will depend
on their ability to live with their Israeli neighbors.
When settler leaders, lay or rabbinic, seek to win
through intimidation what they have lost through
the political process they simply repeat the mistake
of the Palestinians and become truly their own
Worst enemies. The days for speech of that kind are
not just numbered, they are gone — and must be
strongly rebuked. ❑
*x.
6/9
2000
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