David Sorkin, executive director of the JCC, said
both he and Rabbi Buckman are excited about the
cooperative efforts that can take place this coming year.
"We have the high school at the Center; they have the
Center at the high school," Sorkin said.
JAMD staff and students will be in excellent posi-
tions for jobs at the JCC, he added, both during the
year and once school is out. In addition, students will be
able to participate in internship positions at the Janice
Charach Epstein Gallery, also located inside the JCC.
Use of the athletic facilities will continue once the
JAMD leaves the Center.
Sorkin called Rabbi Buckman "knowledgeable and
committed to partnership, to coming to a consensus.
That means not always getting your own way."
Cooperative efforts are being made to find space for
the groups and organizations displaced at the center by
the JAMD. However, due to construction schedules,
Sorkin said, "The school is in that space absolutely one
year only."
For the 2001-2002 school year, the JAMD board
plans to place a one-piece modular building elsewhere
on the Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Jewish
Community Campus, Garden said. Although this
would be temporary, it would be solidly built, with a
cheerful interior and an exterior.

MAVENS AND MENTSHFS

The JAMD aims to produce graduates who .are
mentshes, concerned with "not simply what's in it for
them, but what they owe other people, both Jews and
non-Jews," Rabbi Buckman said.
"When I talk to parents, the model I have in my
mind for the school is that of a ladder, where academic
' excellence is at the base of the ladder and goodness is at
the summit," he said. "Our goal is to emphasize both."
The school will hold two minyanim (prayer quo-
rums) each morning, a mechitza minyan, where boys
and girls worship separately and an egalitarian minyan,
where they may pray together. All classes will be co-
educational except "Power Fitness for Girls."
Unlike most transdenominational schools, the
JAMD's other policies, including admissions, will be
based on Halacha (Jewish law), which defines a Jewish
person as someone with a Jewish mother.
"The school's principle is based on the same stan-
dard that all other day schools in the city use — Hillel,
Akiva — there is no other standard that is used by day
schools currently in Detroit. We are not undermining
that," Rabbi Buckman said.
Despite this policy, he encouraged any students who
wish to attend the JAMD to apply.
"If we come into a halachic issue, we know there are
rabbis in the community who will help us work
through those kinds of issues," he said.
The JAMD will offer sophisticated, text-based
ewish education, along with competitive college-
reparatory courses.
There will be as many as four sections of some
ourses to accommodate the students' different back-
rounds. For example, some students have been speak-
ng Hebrew all their lives, while others may have heard
e language only through prayers in a synagogue.
Led by Rabbi Buckman, the school has hired a high-
y, credentialed staff of about 20 full- and part-time
ducators. His top administrators are Rabbi Aaron

:

Bergman, head of the Judaic Studies
Department, and Dr. Helene Cohen,
director of academic affairs.

Some of the incoming
Keren attended public schools through
JAMD students are, top
eighth
grade, graduating from East Hills
row: Pele Browner and
Middle
School last spring. Her parents,
Deborah Anstandig
Alex
and
Devorah, are both native Israelis,
and bottom row: Ari
and
their
two children, Keren and her
Mendelson, Michael
SEEKING STUDENTS
younger
brother
David, speak Hebrew
_ Kroopnik and Jason
Beginning in spring 1999, the JAMD
with their parents and grandfather. The
Garden, all of West
board and Rabbi Buckman began recruit- Bloomfield.
Stiebels also visit Israel each summer.
ing students through informal get-togeth-
The family attended an informational
ers at members' homes and presentations at the Jewish
meeting about the academy in June 1999.
Community Center, synagogues, religious schools and
"After going to public school so long, where I never
day schools.
had any Hebrew, I decided I was interested," said
No one had to strong-arm Keren Stiebel of
Keren, whose name in Hebrew means "ray of light."
Bloomfield Township to attend. She's the one who con-
"I went to more and more meetings and I became
vinced her parents.
DREAM on page 10

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2000

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