For Openers

Winning For Others

V 'cha
I now © 2000

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer

or 12-year-old Ian Weiner, the teachings of his school, the val-
ues of his parents and the tzedakah lessons learned in synagogue
culminated last month in the oddest of places — a Farmington
Hills toy store called Zany Brainy.
The winner of a drawing for a 90-sec-
ond shopping spree, Weiner of Franklin
sped through the aisles, knowing the
more items he gathered, the more toys
and games would be donated to Toys for
Tots. Zany Brainy pledged to match the
...
dollar amount of what Ian collected.
Just a couple of days before the event,
Ian and his mom were discussing his bar
Ian Weiner crets congratulations mitzvah at Congregation Shaarey Zedek
in March 2001. He is a seventh-grader
from his fat er Stewart.
at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan
Detroit in Farmington Hills. They
talked about how part of Ian's bar mitzvah project through the synagogue
eras making a donation to someone in need, and how his school was hold-
ing its yearly Chanukah gift collection for needy children.
"That's when I decided to get Lego sets to donate at Hillel," Ian says.
He decided to pick out "small ones so I could get more and a lot of kids
could get them."
Ian says he made several pre-spree practice runs before the final heat on
Nov. 9, staying close to the electronic game and building toy sections of
the store.
"All his coaches and teachers always say, 'Practice, practice, practice,"'
says Ian's mother Cheryl Weiner, herself a teacher. But the most important
lesson she wanted him to learn was, "This is not about him. He is repre-
senting the store in getting toys to give to other kids."
On the spree day, Ian's parents Cheryl and Stewart Weiner, brother
Adam, 11, and a group of supportive friends cheered as Ian, dressed in his
Hillel cross-country uniform, gathered the carefully thought-out items.
Later, sorting through his winnings, Ian separated out one specially
chosen item as a gift for his brother; then his mother wrapped the Lego
sets he had selected for the gift project at Hillel.
"Donating toys to help other kids is the right thing to do," says Ian,
who collected merchandise valued at $2,500 on the spree.
"It's a lot of money and a lot of toys," he says. "But if I win something, for
free, and get $2,500 worth of toys, somebody else should get to win, too." 0

By Goldfein
ince 13 is the age of bar mitzvah,

S

that number is not an unlucky one
for Jews. Can you name other Jewish
items that number 13?
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sluiod (looq Jai(EJd) dnrps ino `..IEDA dEaT
4sImaj e ur sqluoui I DIE DIDLII :dallISUV

Yiddish Limericks

A doc told a woman named Corning
"You're pregnant!" without any warning.
She said, "Ich hub maim!'
He answered, "Ain braira.**
The rabbit just paygered*** this morning."

— Martha Jo Fleischmann

* I'm afraid
** There's no choice
*** died

Quotables

"Each month, I arrive in Berlin as an
American, and I leave as a Jew."
— Jewish Museum Berlin director W
Michael Blumenthal, a Berlin native who
was President Jimmy Carter's Treasury secre-
tary. He spends part of each month in Berlin
and the rest in Princeton, N.J.

"History has shown us that evil and hateful
words, if unchecked, all too often lead to
evil deeds and hate crimes."
— Richard Hirschhaut, Midwest regional
director for the Anti-Defamation League,
in the wake of the Ku Klux Klan's
planned Dec. 16 protest in Skokie,
a heavily Jewish community.

GRAPLIEWZ BY Mendel

WAN.K8 , IS OUR TEMPLE
PRESIDENT iN ?

BE
WITH YOU IN TUST
AMOMENT,
RABf3I

< I WANT .YOU TO WANT ME/ J
• / NEED you SO BADLY
y CAN'T THINK OF AN Y -

THING BUT

WANTED:
DEAD
OR
ALIVE

GoING OUT OF M%
HEAP OVER tOU- OUT OF

.

rMS HERD OVER

e

BIG FUNDRAISING SOLIC-
ITATION FOR THE

TEMPLE

SO I
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E-mail: jarc @jarc.org

12/15
2000

5

