This Week
For Openers
Cultural Ambassadors
New York
ewish books aren't just for Jews any more.
This summer, the Los Angeles library initiates a
national summer reading program aimed at chil-
dren in preschool through sixth grade. But though
the books read must be Jewish, the children reading them
do not.
"We can exchange between different cultural centers,"
said Abigail Yasgur, a librarian and director of the Jewish
Community Library of Los Angeles, mentioning Japanese,
African American, Filipino and Korean community centers
in California and elsewhere.
"You start to read my literature, I'll start to read your
literature. You start to understand my culture because you
read my literature, and I'll start to understand your culture
because I read your literature," she said.
The reading program requires children to read six books
"of Jewish content" at an age-appropriate level before the end
of September. After filling out a form, available online at
www.jdla.org, participants receive a certificate and a prize.
"It's family-based education," Yasgur said. "If the fifth-
grader in your family reads to the preschooler, both children
can put the book on their list. It's a win-win situation — out
there to get kids to participate in Jewish literacy"
The summer reading
9 program is the first activity of the
new National Children's Jewish Literacy Campaign, begun
in Los Angeles with a national advisory board.
Yasgur said future events include a radio program with
celebrities, including Sandra Bernhard and Henry Winkler,
reading Jewish stories. The program, called One People,
Many Voices, should be released before Chanuka.
For the past three years, the Los Angeles library con-
ducted the book program successfully on a local level.
Yasgur said she mailed about 30,000 brochures to
libraries across the country, including contacting non-
Jewish organizations, to inform them of the summer read-
ing program. The program is funded through grants from
the Ahmanson Foundation, the David Geffen Foundation,
the Lear Family Foundation and the Winnick Family
Foundation.
"There's no other national umbrella summer reading
program that focuses on Jewish reading," Yasgur said.
"The beauty of this program is, I'm responsible for getting
the participants their certificates and prizes, so it won't
make a dent in other budgets." ❑
— Brian Seidman, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
ORAPLIEWZ
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popular day-trip destination during the summer,
many families pass through four municipalities
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name the municipalities and the final destination?
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Yiddish Limericks
An angry young girl from La Costa
Berating her boyfriend, yelled, "Basta!
Each time you swing by,
You give a gshry,*
And wake up the gahnseh cholostrar"
— Martha Jo Fleischmann
* a shout
*- whole bunch or gang
notables
"We have the ability today to operate on
the clogged artery of the Jewish people."
— Rabbi Avraham Jacobovitz, speaking
out against the tides of full assimilation
at Machon L'Torah/The Jewish
Learning Network of Michigan's 20th
anniversary awards dinner in
Southfield.
Rabbi Jacobovitz
"I'm more Indiana Jew than
Indiana Jones."
— David Borgenicht, co-author of "The Worst-Case Scenario
Survival Handbook," who said he was inspired by his own
paranoia to compile survival strategies for such scenarios as
being confronted by a mountain lion, sinking in quicksand or
trying to maneuver atop a speeding train.'
BY Mendel
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WE'RE GLAD THAT &40 COULD
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AND WELLNESS RETREAT!
-
By Goldfein
hile traveling from Detroit's Jewish suburbs to a
VOU SEEM A LITTLE TEN5E-
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gOUr
NO, NOT AT ALL.
SO, LIKE, WHEN DO
I GeT
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