other communities.
He became 2001 national chair of
the United Jewish Communities
Young Adult Mission to Israel, and
has been co-chair or bus captain on
five other Israel missions, including
the largest local young adult mis-
sion, I2K Israel 2000, when 150
Detroiters participated.
Single, "but looking," Kaufman
has an affable, regular-guy quality
about him, at ease with whomever is
in the room.

The Joy

f Iludais

Hard Sell Now

Kaufman knows that getting back to
mass marketing Israel as an outreach
vehicle to uninvolved Jews won't
happen until the violence stops, but
"if there's a positive turn in the
events, it won't take that long," he
said. "You'd have some kind of a
pent-up demand from those who
wanted to go to Israel but didn't
because of the situation."
He sees a gradual build-up over a
couple of years of people traveling to
Israel. Until then, Kaufman, a mem-
ber of UJC's National Young
Leadership Cabinet, and soon to be
Federation's Young Adult Division
president, said there are other plates
to take the "target audience."
He's taking 18 thirty-somethings
to Kiev (Ukraine) and Poland on
April 27 as part of a Federation-
sponsored young leadership develop-
ment trip. The trip will use Jewish
travel as part of a yearlong education
process to fast track into Jewish
involvement those people who have
shown leadership in other parts of
the community.
"In a perfect world, to get that
connection to something Jewish and
to Jewish identity, we would be
going to Israel," he said. "But people
who are not particularly involved
won't travel to Israel now. We decid-
ed to go to our partnership city of
Kiev and see Jewish sites in Poland."
Over the long term, Kaufman
hopes to see more Detroit thirty-
somethings share his sense of corn-
munity — the sense of giving to a
safety net.
"We have a great Jewish communi-
ty because of the people, not because
of the system, and if we don't replace"
those people, many of which we've
lost it the last few years, or will in
the next 10 years, we're going to be
in trouble," he said. "So in some
sense, I feel an obligation to be one
of those people." ❑

In jeans, a white T-shirt andzunning shoes,
Birnholtz relaxes in the living room of her Ann
Arbor campus flat. Across from her, a couch is
covered with school papers. A guitar her brother
is teaching her to play rests against a volleyball,
knee pads and a pile of the New York Times.
Baking tofu and a crock-pot of her grandmoth-
er's cholent (Shabbat lunchtime stew) wafts from
the kitchen, her contribution for a Mexican-
themed Shabbat dinner with friends.
' Birnholtz is as diverse as she is eclectic and defies
categorization. Her close friends include non-prac-
ticing Jews and non-Jews. She loves the sense of
community at the Orthodox shul and attends the
Orthodox minyan (prayer quorum) on campus.
She's also been a member of Conservative syna-
gogues, and was the undergraduate co-leader of
American Movement for Israel, a student group that
brought Israeli culture to campus.

Finding A New Path

Melanie Birnholtz seeks a

special way to help young ews

return to their religion.

SHARON LUCKERMAN

Staff Writer

M

elanie Birnholtz, 24, was a pre-med student at
the University of Michigan until she spent her
third year studying in Israel. The experience
changed her life.
"I found a passion inside me, an excitement for Judaism,"
she says of her year abroad. "And I want to find ways to make
others feel this same excitement."
Birnholtz didn't always feel this way.
Growing up, she learned to say the prayers at services and
Hebrew school, but she had little sense of their meaning or
why she was saying them, she says. "I didn't know what por-
tion I had for my bat mitzvah until I read it a few years ago in
.,
English."
But today, the Oak Park native is one of 13 graduate stu-
dents at the U-M's Sol Drachler Program in Jewish Communal
Leadership in the School of Social Work. She has one more
year of study.
Though she still struggles with philosophical questions about
Judaism, what it is and how she wants to practice it, she is clear
about her life's ambition:
"I want to introduce rituals into Jewish households and show
people the importance of leading a Jewish life inside and out-
side of your house," she says. "I don't know the answer of how
to help kids choose Judaism when they leave home, but that's
what I want to figure out."

Thoughtful and warm, Birnholtz describes her
brand of leadership as "different, not political," and
acids, "I'm a leader in a social way"
And perhaps her understanding of a variety of
people will help her discover a special way to help
Jews return to their religion.
- "I don't think I want to work through a syna-
gogue. They sometimes turn people off," she says, a
lesson learned while interning at Eilu Eilu, the
Adult Jewish Learning Project of the Michigan
Conservative Movement. She found that some Jews
who don't belong to a synagogue preferred learning
at cafes and at the Jewish Community Center.
"Melanie's got such a whole sense of herself as
a Jew; she can reject labels and limitations people
put on her," says Eilu v' Eilu project director
Nancy Kaplan, who selected Birnholtz to work
for the organization. "She's a self-starter, daring,
has a lot of enthusiasm ... and loves to learn."
Last summer, Kaplan adds, she hired Birnholtz as a paid
employee. "I admire Melanie very much and think she'll do
great things."
At the root of her positive nature, Birnholtz says, is her
family. "We have a very comfortable family; I don't have to
watch what I say," she says. "They allow me to explore
ideas and I can always say what's on my mind." .
She also credits her return trip to Israel last year on
Project Otzma, a 10-month volunteer program in Israel for
recent college graduates, as "the biggest thing that formed
my identity as a person as well as a Jew." There, she taught
English and worked with Jewish youth from Ethiopia and
Russia in working-class development towns.
Old Jewish stories also have inspired her, as has working with
Rabbi Lee Buckman at the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan
Detroit in West Bloomfield, where she interns two days a
week. His leadership style empowers everybody, she says.
When asked about her major concern for the future of the
Jewish community Birnholtz says, "You have so many choices
today. Judaism is a choice, no longer a given. The generation
of my grandparents who came from Eastern Europe knew
things Jewish like the blessings on what you eat. But that's
not as true anymore for my generation. Things are not
passed down. New families don't have that knowledge.
"And when we have so many choices, we have to sell
Judaism. It's sad, but we each have to decide if it's what
we want."

❑

r

4/26
2002

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