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Editorials are posted and archived on JN Online:
www.detroitjewishnews.com

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Securing The Future

C

hallenging a school to raise a specified
amount of money before presenting it with
a significant gift is a proven way to establish
accountability on the part of stakeholders. It
spurs them to embrace the cause before asking others
to do so. It means parents and philanthropists who
now support the school won't continue to bear the
brunt of funding.
Philanthropists Jean and Sam Frankel were identi-
fied last week as the 2002 donors of a $20 million
Endowment Challenge Fund and a $500,000 Tuition
Assistance Challenge Fund to support the Jewish
Academy of Metropolitan Detroit. Symbolically, their
unprecedented gifts validate the JAMD, an independ-
ent, pluralistic high school that graduated its
first class last year.
The grants have the potential to substan-
tively reduce the JAIVID's reliance on com-
munal support. The Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit has invested at least $1.25 mil-
lion in the school — money well spent.
The JAMD, working with Federation, must raise
$10 million to realize the full value of the landmark
$20 million gift for operations. The goal is to cover
up to 80 percent of operating costs with tuition.
The tuition assistance fund for new students will
match each dollar in financial aid raised by the school,
up to $500,000. This fund will couple with existing
scholarship money available through Federation and
other donors to put a multi-stream day school educa-
tion within reach of more kids from families with
fixed or limited incomes. At least 25 percent of
JAMD families draw financial aid.
The Frankel gifts say the JAMD, a formerly risky
endeavor, is here to stay. They reinforce the worth that
Detroit Jewry attaches to combined secular and reli-

Dry Bones

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of 71-1E PEACE

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17 WOULD
START DJITA
TERRORI
LAWLESSN55 ,
HATRED AND
VIOLeNCE.

gious learning during the highly
PROCESS WERE
formative teen years.
To e PtAq61)
Today, the JAMD has 135 stu-
RACK WARDS
dents. Tuition is $13,750, up
LIKE A DEO
$3,750 from the first year. The
increase stemmed from expanding
AP6
to four grades, the price of recruiting
and keeping top teachers and staff,
and a decline in subsidy funding.
The Frankel gifts can't be used for
construction, nor should they be.
Over the years, Federation has been
there with subsidies to help day
schools with bricks-and-mortar
costs. Private gifts have
funded other building
AND 17
additions and improve-
WOULD GET
ments.
PRcGRESSIV6V{
Still, the gifts will free up money
Ber-re AND MOR
used on classroom needs to start a
PEACEFUL Oa
building fund. Continued growth
VT HAD A 1-1APPY
will require more classroom space
HOPEFUL 6N11 tQG
than the JAMD currently has on the
Eugene and Marcia Applebaum
Jewish Community Campus.
Any school would cherish the
generosity of the Frankels. When
that generosity comes with a well-
reasoned challenge, the school bene-
fits via broader community support
and fortified financial standing.
Based on its accomplishments so
far, the JAMD, headed by Rabbi
continue to embrace students from diverse Jewish
Lee Buckman, is up to the challenge. So is Federation.
backgrounds, including less observant, unaffiliated
As the JAMD goes about the business of nurturing
and under-involved families. Such diversity con-
Jewish identity and instilling Jewish purpose, it must
tributes to making a good school great. ❑

-

y

EDIT OIIAL

r.

E

With Rocks In Their Hands

T

he picture last week of pre-teen boys
preparing to throw stones at an oncoming
tank looked like a scene from the West
Bank or Gaza. Instead, it was snapped in
Falluja, in Iraq. The boys were Sunni Muslims and the
tank was American.
The image was a stark reminder of how closely
America's "war on terror" has come to resemble Israel's
efforts to stem Palestinian mayhem and how difficult
the task remains.
In both cases, the occupying forces started off with
an apparently clear and moral purpose. Israel was
going
oinc, b to hold onto the land it won in 1967
only as long as it took to negotiate a peaceful
settlement with the Arabs who had started the .
war, and America was going to be in Iraq only long
enough to get rid of Saddam Hussein, remove any
weapons of mass destruction and establish a new Iraqi
civilian government.
But as the troops have remained, the civilian popula-
tions have come to doubt the occupiers' motives.
Many Iraqis think America is there because it wants
oil and other business opportunities. Others see the
troops as warring against Islam rather than liberating a
population to govern itself. Similarly, the Palestinians,

their Arab allies and significant populations in Europe
and elsewhere doubt Israel's claim that it merely wants
secure borders with a stable and peaceful Palestine.
They see the growth of the settlements, the seizure of
other land for a security barrier following a line dictat-
ed unilaterally by Israel, continuing harassment at
checkpoints, raids against terrorists that end with the
deaths of innocent civilians as proof that Israel doesn't
really want a viable Palestinian state on its border.
President George W. Bush promises that America
will "stay the course" until there is a workable demo-
cratic regime in Baghdad. But Saddam loyalists and
would-be Muslim theocrats know that
America may tire of having its troops killed
while Iraq appears stuck in a social and eco-
nomic morass requiring billions in American
grant dollars. They have every incentive to continue to
make trouble, just as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the
Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades do in the West Bank and
Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says publicly that
until the terror stops, he will not negotiate with the
Palestinians and particularly not with Yasser Arafat.
But only Arafat controls the security forces that might
be able to rein in the terrorists, so the Sharon formula-

EDIT ORIAL

don — however correct it seems to most Israelis and
their American allies — looks to a lot of Palestinians
like another humiliating pretext for endlessly denying
them a separate state.
America still has a chance to prove its intent in Iraq.
It may have to cede control, possibly to a NATO com-
mand, and it may have to acknowledge that its initial
claims about Hussein's weapons were wrong. It is not
clear that Bush and his advisers would be willing to
take that leap of faith.
The Israeli-Palestinian standoff also cannot be
resolved without dramatic gestures, and Sharon will
have to set aside his skepticism long enough to take a
first step. If he could arrange, for example, to curb
expansion of settlements that Israel does not particular-
ly need or to pause construction of the least important
parts of the security barrier, then he might give
Palestinian moderates a face-saving "victory" that could
be parlayed into real efforts to restrain their terrorists.
Of course Hussein was a monster. Of course Arafat
remains a terrorist. But in the end, it will be up to the
men who put the tanks on the streets to show the boys
in Falluja or Jenin that it is okay to drop those stones
and go back home. 7

11/14
2003

35

