For Openers

Southern Comfort

Palm Beach
is no surprise Jews were among the first Floridians the
news media interviewed amid the great "butterfly ballot"
controversy in Palm Beach County following the Nov. 7
presidential election.
Jews number 230,000 in the south Florida county, making it
he sixth-largest Jewish area in the nation — more than double
the size of metro Detroit's Jewish community. The growth rate
over the past 12 years is a whopping 33 percent, according to a
1999 study commissioned- by the Jewish Federation of Palm
Beach County.
Most of the county's newest Jewish residents are retirees
from the Northeast and Midwest or immigrants from the
Caribbean and Latin America. Younger families provide stu-
dents for the four Jewish day schools and the high school yeshi-
va.
The southern part of the county — especially Boynton
Beach, Delray Beach and Boca Raton — is home to the oldest
Jewish population in the U.S.; nearly 70 percent are 65 and
older. More than half have visited Israel. Most identify as
Reform or Conservative.
Together, they've made quite an impression. Their choices
include 45 synagogues and three Jewish Community Center
campuses, and the rhythm of Jewish life is varied and vibrant.
More than 90 percent of Palm Beach County's Jews say they
perform Jewish ritual, pay dues to a Jewish organization or con-
tribute to a Jewish charity.
Ten percent of all American Jews, 644,000, live in Palm
Beach County and the two counties immediately south,
Broward and Miami-Dade, according to University of Miami
demographer Ira Sheskin's study.
Most of the thirty- and fortysomethings in Palm Beach
County are not the children of snowbirds or New Floridians,
Sheskin says. So because they live elsewhere, children of Florida
seniors are less involved in their parents' care.
Notably, the county's Jewish influence now resonates at The
Breakers, a posh ocean-side hotel that once barred Jewish
groups. Over Chanukah, it displayed a Lucite and stone meno-
rah in the lobby. Golf club member Lowell Levine helped per-
suade the hotel management to commission the menorah from
local artist Ike Rosenfeld, a Shoah survivor.
"It's a new millennium," Levine told the Palm Beach Jewish
News. "They realize that without the Jewish money coming
into the hotel, they might as well close down." ❑
—Robert A. Sklar, Editor

I

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Yiddish Limericks

COMMUNAL

RESPONSIBILITICS!..

JARC
Merle and Shirley Harris
Children and
Family Division

Services for children with special
needs and their families.

"I can't shake this cold in my head,"
Once sneezed a poor patient named Fred.
"You've got to believe me.
I beg you relieve me.
Cnossen tsum emess!' he said.

— Martha Jo Fleischmann

- The sneeze confirmed the truth (idiomatic supersti-
tion)

Quotables

"FDR was a champion of the dispossessed — who
had real courage, who was a voice for the voiceless.
But if he knew what they say he knew about the
slaughter of Jews in Europe, and he did not act, that
is very serious — inexcusable. It's important to
explore these questions. I think I'm uniquely qualified
because of my heritage, and I hope to do it one day."
— Joshua Boettiger, in his first year at the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pa.,
and a great-grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"I fully appreciate that what I did was wrong.
Grievously wrong. My intent was to help Israel, but I
had no right . . . to place myself above the law."
—Jonathan Pollard, the Navy intelligence analyst,
remorseful and seeking clemency in a letter
to President Bill Clinton. He was sentenced to
life in prison in 1987 for spying for Israel.

GRAPEJEWZ Bylleadel

EvSeONE IJUTS A PIECE of ME!
WORK PEmANT75!
FAmiL.. TIME!

BECAUSE
EVERY
CHILD
IS PART
OF OUR
COMMUNITY

ANP eVEM•oPT.5 A LIAJAbS NAGGING BECAUSE THE blot: LP IS BEING
ME AND ASKING ME To Do ALL
SP INISENSi TI VC
TO M9 NEEDS
KINDS OF STOFF
SEE,
... AND YOOIRS
PON'TREALL
AND I WANT SOU
NOW WHERE
SEEING ME
WANT To Do!
TO MAKE IT STOP! PIP I PUT
THOSE FORMS
BECAUSE...,
FOR GRIEVANCES
AGAINST THE UNIVERSE?

✓ Outreach, support,
information, referral and
advocacy for families

✓ Educational and social
programs for families

✓ In-home respite care with a
trained JARC staff person

✓ Case management with a
person-centered focus

✓ Funding for aides so children
with special needs can
participate in recreational
activities with their non-
disabled peers

✓ Comprehensive supports to
help, children with special
needs successfully attend
religious schools

Thanks to The Jewish Fund
and Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit for their
support of the Harris Division.

Call JARC at

,

41:4110

248-352-5272

jarci

28366 Franklin Road
Southfield, MI 48034
jarc@jarc.org
www.jarc.org

1/5
2001

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