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Blue And White

Balloons

Hillel and Jewish Academy
students celebrate
Israel's 54th birthday.

DIANA LIEBERMAN Copy Editor/Education Writer

KRISTA HUSA Staff" Photographer

A

t two local Jewish day schools, the April
17 celebration of Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel
Independence Day, meant a day off in the
spring air.
"This year, with the situation in Israel and the con-
stant stream of bad news, it was especially important
to be uplifted and to celebrate," said Michele
Borovoy of West Bloomfield, co-chair with Beth
Margolin of Orchard Lake of the annual Israel
Independence Day festival at Hillel Day School of
Metropolitan Detroit.
The afternoon featured arts and crafts, food, games
and inflatable slides. Star Trax provided a back-
ground of pop music; Uri Seigel taught Israeli dance.
Earlier that day, at the. Jewish Academy of
Metropolitan Detroit in West Bloomfield, a commit-
tee headed by Hebrew teacher Dr. Cobi Sacerdoti
served the high schoolers abundant plates of falafel
and Israeli salads. The students then launched arm-
fuls of blue and white helium balloons into the sky.
Other balloons went with them to the nearby
Fleischman Residence, where, accompanied on guitar
by JAMD teacher Rabbi Baruch Lazewnik and stu-
dent Jonathan Guyer of Huntington Woods, they
serenaded the residents with Hebrew song and dance.
But the joy over Israel's 54th birthday was tem-
pered with anxiety over the fate of the Jews of Israel.
At both events, information on Detroit Jewry's
Israel Emergency Campaign was available at a booth
set up by the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit. Students and families also could learn how
to contact Israeli soldiers, or get the addresses of local
media outlets and elected officials for a pro-Israel let-
ter-writing campaign. [1]

JAIVID Junior Pele
Browner, 16,
of [lest Bloomfield.
wields a handful
of balloons

Making an Israeli necklace at
Hillel is Alex Bruni, 9, of West
Bloomfield.

a

Seven-year-old Hillel students Talya Nevins of
Farmington Hills and Hannah Korelitz of
Huntington Woods display the Israeli flag
crafts they made.

JAMD sophomore Jeremy Baruch, 16, of West
Bloomfield copies names and addresses for a
letter-writing campaign in support of Israel.

ZiN

5/3
2002

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