Opinion
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Dry Bones
Trust In Education
etroit Jewry is $10 million along toward
a $50 million endowment for Jewish day
school education — a bold initiative that
serves as a national model for endowing
the operation of day schools and assuring that cost
isn't a barrier to such an education.
The Jewish Education Trust is rooted in the
belief that this special blend of secular and reli-
gious learning builds Jewish identity, promotes
Jewish continuity and shapes Jewish leadership
during our children's formative years. It
strives to negate "ability to pay" as the
deciding factor for admission.
Time will determine the effectiveness
of the fledgling program.
But it's off to a good start.
None of our Jewish schools — day, synagogue or
supplemental — is so well off that it believes
Jewish education, so crucial to repelling the effects
of assimilation and proselytizing, isn't a communal
responsibility.
The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit-
sponsored trust sharply curtails competition
among day schools, the most expensive kind of
Jewish education, for the attention of a limited
pool of private donors. The trust gives all day
schools, whatever their size or religious thrust, a
better chance to excel and succeed. It helps level
the field in the constant search for more opera-
tional and scholarship dollars.
Make no mistake: Federation doesn't have a bot-
tomless financial wet( to draw from against the back-
drop of rising day school costs, but parents alone
cannot continue to absorb yearly tuition hikes.
The first 10 givers to the trust were introduced
last week at the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan
D
Detroit's annual reception. Their sub-
stantial commitment to Jewish educa-
tion is a tribute to the vision of our
community, at 96,000 residents only
the 11th largest Jewish community
nationwide.
Guest speaker at the reception was
Rabbi Joshua Elkin, executive director
of the Partnership for Excellence in
Jewish Education, a grant-making and
advocacy agency for Jewish
day schools. He said: "Now
that the economy is not
pumping along with those
astronomical growths in GNP each
year, the affordability issue, has showed
itself more strongly. We need to be
looking at this more carefully so that
families are not driven out of the
option of a day school education
because of not being able to afford it."
The vast potential of the trust is a rea-
son to be optimistic about our day
schools. But don't let that optimism mask
these other immediate concerns: finding,
training and keeping staff, especially in
the sciences and mathematics; controlling
school fees; developing innovative course-
work; helping the cultural arts resonate;
and holding parents to a higher degree of
accountability. There's also inequity
between larger and smaller schools when it comes to
computer technology and instruction.
Day schools allow children to "do Jewish" togeth-
er — to discover their heritage and tradition, and
grasp the ideals of tikkun olam (repair of the world)
and kid Yisrael (people of Israel).
That is why what the Academy gave the Jewish
EDITO RIAL
Related story: page 30
Targeting Children
hat is it about killing Israeli children
that the rest of the world finds so hard
to understand?
When a Palestinian homicide
bomber killed a 15-month-old girl and
her grandmother in a crowd of women
and their children at the Petach Tikvah
mall, the act drew an international shrug.
When a Palestinian gunman last month shot and
killed three yeshivah students in Itamar, near
Nablus, the world barely blinked.
How much more awful does the Palestinian ter-
rorism have to be before the world can bring itself
to acknowledge that this is not a legitimate resist-
ance to what the Palestinians deceptively call an
"illegal occupation?" Will Hamas or Islamic Jihad
have to blow up a kindergarten Shabbat to convince
us that they are evil barbarians, unworthy of sympa-
thy or respect?
Some argue that the Palestinians have to resort
to desperate measures, such as Wednesday's bomb-
ing of a bus that killed at least 16 Israelis, because
Israel, enjoying an overwhelming edge in tradition-
al military power, would not otherwise bargain
fairly with them. Never mind that Israel bargained
more than fairly in the talks at Camp
David and Taba and Oslo before that;
how does that strategic difference justify
deliberately choosing children as your tar-
gets? Blow up yourselves and adults around you if
you think you must, but what moral code allows
you to shoot at kindergartners or kids on a basket-
ball court as happened last week?
The world was shocked when, at the start of the
violence some 20 months ago, a 12-year-old
Palestinian boy was caught in the crossfire and shot
to death at his father's side. Then the world thought
that killing a child was reprehensible, the sign of a
monstrous Israeli indifference to codes of civilized
conduct. Nor did that opinion change when the evi-
dence later suggested that Palestinian bullets killed
the boy, Muhammad Dura.
EDITORIAL
Education Trust founding donors was so fitting — a
hand-sized glass globe, symbolic of the world they
are helping mold through Jewish education.
And that is why we, as a community, must make
sure that our day schools help their students proud-
ly carry the Torah without the risk of dropping it
and tarnishing what Judaism represents.
❑
But now when Israeli children are attacked in cold
blood — in their schools, in their cribs, at prayer —
the terrorists somehow escape the contempt they so
richly deserve. It could make one believe that the
world is somehow grateful to have fewer Jews grow-
ing up in it.
When machete-wielding terrorists in Sudan were
hacking off the hands and feet of children a few
years ago, the world cried, "Stop, this is intolerable!"
When Palestinians blow Jewish children to bits, the
world doesn't care.
Soon, the world will resume its chant about how
Israel must make tough concessions to the
Palestinians, must give them a state and an army and
the freedom to stockpile even more weapons that
could be turned against Israel. The world says that we
must all seize the moment of a temporary reduction
in the violence to rush back to a negotiating table
where Israel will be bargaining against itself because
Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat can be
counted on to refuse to make any offer of his own.
What we want to ask the world is this: Would you
talk peace with someone who has killed your chil-
dren and is ready — no, eager — to do it again? ❑