Editorials Editorials and Letters to the Editor are posted and archived on JN Online: www.detroitjewishnews.com 111 Challenges Aplenty etro Detroit's newest Jewish W high school will open on We Monday with the expectation Lear that it can't miss — and that should surprise no one. Rabbi Lee Buckman, the Jewish Academy of Met- ropolitan Detroit's charismatic and hard-working head of school, has built a strong administrative and teaching team — richly varied, deeply talented and widely respected. They will feel the joy of opening a Jewish high school — offering both secular and Jewish studies — with perhaps the largest opening-day enrollment of a non-Orthodox yeshiva ever in North America. That's yet another distinction for Detroit's Jewish community, which has methodically become a national laboratory for elevating the role of Jewish education. Skeptics stood up in 1998, when then-president Jeffrey Garden and other determined founders announced that their still-unnamed new Jewish high school wouldn't recognize patrilineal descent — a problem for some liberal Jews. But even though it follows the principles of the Conservative movement, the school is open to stu- dents from each major stream. No one is turned away without a concerted effort to overcome spiritu- al and financial hurdles. Notably, 90 percent of the academy's ninth- and 10th-graders say they would have gone to a public Related cover story begins on page 6 high school. So the school hasn't hurt our community's Orthodox yeshivot, as some feared. Meanwhile, the academy is communally rooted. Without $750,000 from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, $250,000 from the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Educa- tion, a suitable educational setting at the Jewish Com- munity Center in West Bloomfield and other levels of support, the academy still would be a dream. The academy promises to be a golden opportuni- ty for impressionable teenagers ready to sharpen their Jewish identity through increased knowledge of, and appreciation for, their Jewish-heritage. But first, it must earn high marks this kickoff year. Ironically, the academy opens the week after the 25th annual conference of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE). Whether the school succeeds will depend to a large extent on how well it responds to many of the concerns facing CAJE educators: staff recruitment, training and retention; tuition affordability; curriculum develop- ment and cultural arts opportunities. Like all Jewish day, afternoon and supplemental schools, the academy must assure that teachers are treated with respect and dignity — and as partners with, not stand-ins for, parents. It must satisfy parental pressure for a quality of education that is equal to, or better than, that of tax-supported high schools. Two more grades still need to be added, too. Tough, important challenges all. IN FOCUS A Dream Fulfilled Representatives of the Detroit Jewish community wel- comed two Bosnian-Muslim students upon their • arrival here last Friday. The students, Adnon Memic, 18, and his sister, Nermina, 20, will attend St. Mary's College in Orchard Lake through the help of Jewish communal and institutional involvement, including Detroit attorney Michael Traison, far left, and Jewish Community Council of Metropolitan Detroit Execu- tive Director David Gad-Harf, far right. But with a little patience from everyone involved, constructive staff and community feedback, and a resourceful — even daring — approach to teaching, there's every reason to believe the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit will become a pillar of Jewish Detroit. ❑ Right Plan, Wrong Time II ast week Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak finally got around to addressing some of the toughest domestic issues. It was too late. For more than a year following his election, American Jews watched with some pleasure Barak's effort to forge a meaningful governing coalition that embraced the political center as well as his natural left- of-center constituency. We hoped that he could then address not only the peace process, but also the need to reform the government practices that discouraged an open, pluralistic society in which all citizens were treated in an even-handed, respectful way. We knew it was a tall order, particularly as his One Israel party controlled only a third of the 120 seats in the Knesset, the parliament elected separately from the prime minister. Having seen the gridlock in Washing- ton as a Republican congress and a Democratic presi- dent wasted their energies in childlike feuding, it was easy to understand the frustration that ordinary Israelis felt about the standstill in Jerusalem. But the top priority had to be the effort to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians while the national consensus for that was so strong. That it reached the present impasse is not dishonorable; Barak did well to show that it is the Palestinian intransigence and fear that stands in the way of a settlement. In the meantime, however, like a general choosing to ignore his flank while concentrating on the front, Barak made no public effort to address some basic internal unfairness. So when he unveiled this weekend his proposal for reforms such as a modern constitu- tion and for recognizing marriages that were not per- formed by an Orthodox rabbi, the action smacked of political cynicism rather than an honest effort to con- front an unfair and unworkable system. The proposed changes themselves seem laudable. Israel desperately needs a constitutional govern- ment that balances the judicial, executive and leg- islative forces while maintaining a place for the moral values that Torah mandates in a Jewish state. The current system in which the Knesset routinely flouts the Supreme Court, for example, simply breeds disrespect for government. Similarly, while it is unrealistic to expect to cut the Gordian knot of "who is a Jew" in one stroke, the government needs to find a fair way to recog- nize the rights of those citizens who choose not to follow a strictly Orthodox path. Abolishing the stalemated Ministry of Religious Affairs is a good . Related story: page 30 start. Mandating some national service from yeshiva students is another fair demand. Similarly, requiring all schools that get state funds to teach a basic curriculum that includes civics and mathematics is a sound way to assure the future of young people. Shas, the political party of the Sephardim, should not expect to enjoy massive government subsidies without agreeing to alter its schools to meet basic standards of education. But sadly, all of these solid, progressive ideas are being put forward way too late by an administration that has lost its mandate to govern and that knows it must go to elections in the very near future. Barak and One Israel seem to be trying to shore up their natural political base with secular Jewish and Arab-Israeli vot- ers by laying out a program that the Knesset certainly. will never even consider, much less enact. As we have noted before, the right-wing opposi- tion of Likud and the in-again, out-again Shas part- ners have deplorably chosen paths of self-interest rather than working for a national good. Now Barak, in the timing of his proposals, seems to be doing the same thing. It is sad that he had lowered himself and his once hopeful party to a narrow par- tisanship that weakens the state of Israel in the eyes of its citizens and of the world. ❑ 8/25 2000 37