\, ..\\\\ k- kdon Editorials are posted and archived on JN Online: www.detroitjewishnews.com Stakeholder Responsibility n elping Israel build precious infrastructure and helping attract younger supporters to the cause is the aim of the newly recon- stituted Jewish National Fund board in metro Detroit. It's a worthy aim. For 102 years, the JNF has worked to make the countryside compatible for all who live in, support and visit Israel. It's the caretaker of Eretz Yisrael on behalf of its owners, the Jewish people. Jewish Detroit should have an active part in sustaining this ecological lifeline. We should be adept enough at fund-raising to merit a shaliach, our own Israeli emis- sary. With roots in biblical agricultural law, the JNF sprouted from Theodor Herzl's Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901. Over its first century, the JNF helped acquire and devel- op the land in what became the State of Israel in 1948. The JNF not only created forests, but also infrastructure for housing, roads, drinking water, parks, drainage and recreation. Today, the JNF works in tandem with the Israel Lands Authority. During the 1990s, drought, bureaucracy and one- million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia highlighted Israel's chronic water short- age. Ambitious water initiatives brought dams, reser- voirs, desalination plants and river cleanup. A $10 million initiative is bringing security bypass roads along Israel's northern border with Lebanon so children and their parents can travel to school and work unharmed. JNF's once-vibrant presence in metro Detroit faded a few years back as fund-raising efforts changed. Since then, local JNF activity has been sporadic, the work of dedicated volunteers. Dry Bones Ta/614 WORDS ro say Aeour A DTI-SEmaisM Not too many years ago, claims of misman- agement dogged the JNF national leadership. The agency became a spectacle in 1998 when the Knesset debated whether it still had a pur- pose. Since then, the JNF has reorganized its leadership and sought younger supporters unburdened by old ways. More accountability has resulted. Today, the diaspora sends $40 million a year to Israel via the JNF — over a quarter of the JNF's $150 million annual budget. Land leases provide the bulk of the revenue. Time will tell if the new Midwest shaliach, Kami Robinson of West Bloomfield, can reawaken Detroit Jewry's JNF spirit. He's off to a good start in telling the JNF's changing story. And we hope he succeeds in embracing kids by making learning about Israel both relevant and fun and by offering Israeli camp scholarships. His challenge four months after arriving here is fierce competition for communal dol- lars, especially in light of Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit allocation cuts to bal- ance a major revenue shortfall in the 2003- 2004 general fund. Still, we live in a generous, Zionist community. Federation's recent Max M. Fisher Meeting kickoff to its 2004 Annual Campaign for big givers was the best ever. To partner with the JNF is to be a stakeholder in the land Jews so love. That means investing in the land to keep it strong. Robinson's dream is to raise up to $5 million over the next three years to develop a Detroit Jewish Community Reservoir in Israel. With so many wor- thy causes competing for charitable dollars, that won't be easy. But a kooky dream its not. Dreaming big often spurs success. Terrific as the Detroit Jewish community is, it's a shame we're no longer a front-line player for the JNF. With Israel's budget dominated by defense and sus- tenance needs, the JNF is more important than ever in bringing a living return on loving the land. I I Jewish women is rising. Fortunately, improvements in treatment procedures are cutting the actual death rate from the diseases, but the physical and emotional tolls — from radiation and chemotherapy as well as from mastectomy and hysterectomy — are great. Jews have good cause to worry about genetic study in this country. Genetic "research" showing the "infe- riority" of Eastern Europeans was used in the early part of the 20th century to justify immigration restric- tions that excluded hundreds of thousands of Jews from America. They were left to die in the German concentration camps that Hider, who cited the same "research," had built. Now Jews might be concerned that the research about BRCA as well as on 45 other conditions such as Gaucher, Canavan and Tay-Sachs diseases that disproportionately afflict them could be used to set limitations on insurance coverage. The House of Representatives should move to enact the genetic privacy bill the Senate passed earlier this month to bar insurance companies from that sort of discrimination. Equally important, the White House should end its resistance to gene therapy research that could effectively remedy some of these problems. In the meantime, Jewish groups should redouble their efforts in educating our community about the risks as well as the ethical issues. Programs like Hadassah's "It's In the Genes" instruction should be supported. Additionally, because the new data show that the disease risk is not limited to those with family histories of breast and ovarian cancer, Jewish groups should develop counseling programs to help families decide whether to seek genetic testing and how to afford the $2,500 or more that the tests cost. Rabbis should address the moral issues facing prospective parents who carry the genes for cystic fibrosis, Gaucher, breast cancer or other inheritable disease. In the end, we need to remember that our DNA is no more perfect or defective than that of any other group's and that the diseases to which we are prone are common among all humans. What we need to concentrate on is handling the issues with wisdom and compassion. - EDITORIAL Jews, Genes And Cancer A report last week gave troubling new evi- dence of the huge risk that breast and ovar- ian cancer poses for Ashkenazic Jewish women and renewed the urgency for both careful thought and vigorous action to deal with a range of issues that these diseases present. Some of the issues are personal. Should you be test- ed for the gene mutations BRCA1 and BRCA2 that so dramatically menace health? What measures should at-risk women take? How should they assess the risks of bearing children with the same muta- tions? But other issues demand coherent nation- al attention. How can we use genetic research without stigmatizing ethnic groups? What safeguards individual privacy about test results? Who should pay for treatment? At a personal level, the study offered horrifying data. About one in every 50 Ashkenazic women car- ries one of the gene mutations, and 80 percent or more of those women will develop breast or ovarian cancer — and the rate of cancer incidence for younger EDIT ORIAL 10/31 2003 31