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PROFILE
Make A Joyful Noise
ASHLEYGOLDBERG
City: Farmington Hills
Kudos: Running Against Cancer
A bone cancer survivor and student at Indiana
University (IU) in Bloomington, Ashley Goldberg, 20,
helped establish the school's first American Cancer
Society (ACS) Relay for Life, raising $40,000.
How did you get
-wa.sAlid61
- , 14 involved in organiz-
ing the April 3-4
marathon?
"I've attended the
West Bloomfield
High Relay and my
friends at IU want-
ed to start one. I
wanted to give back
to the ACS, which
was always there for
Ashley, second from left, at the Relay.
me and my family."
How do you plan a first-time Relay?
"We started getting volunteers and arranging for
all-night entertainment. To collect donations, I sent
letters to everyone I know and started a Web site. We
had 30 teams, and people walked and ran the track
for 20 hours. I worked but was also part of my
mom's team, Ashley's Angels. My mom [Alissa, a
breast cancer survivor] and I walked the survivors' lap
together."
What do you do as a Michigan child ambassador
for Make-A-Wish Foundation of Michigan?
"I speak at their functions about how I was diag-
nosed with cancer when I was 7 and again at 12,
about how I lost my hair — twice — my treatments
and dozens of surgeries. When I was 8, they provided
me with my wish to meet the cast of the TV show
Full House."
What's in your future?
"I have a big interest in psychology and in helping
other people. I want to work with children who have
been diagnosed with cancer." El
— Shelli Liebman Doi fman, staff writer
To donate to IU's Relay for Life, log on to the Web site:
vvvvvv.acsevents.org/faf/home/defaultasp?ievent=45212
or mail a check to American Cancer Society, Attn.: Web,
P.O. Box 102454 Atlanta, GA 30368-2454.
REPORT A DOER...
Jlf
5/ 7
2004
10
Know a Doer — someone of any age doing interest-
ing, meaningful things in their life outside of their
job? Share suggestions with Keri Guten Cohen, story
development editor, at (248) 351-5144 or e-mail:
kcohenethejewishrtews.corn
GEORGE
CANTOR
Reality
Check
or a few years, we lived
right across the alley
from the Stoliner Shul,
which was on Elmhurst
just east of Linwood in Detroit.
On Saturday mornings, my
mother would wake up in the back
bedroom of the house to the sound
of singing from across the way.
"I'd pinch myself a few times
while I was still half asleep, just to
make sure I hadn't died during the
night and
gone to heav-
en," she says.
This old memory occurred
to me in the wake of the
recent dispute in Hamtramck
over recorded calls to prayers
from the city's mosques.
Some people framed it as an
issue of religious tolerance.
Others insisted they had noth-
ing against Muslims, but that
hearing the sound five times a
day, from dawn to dusk, was
intrusive.
I can understand that,
although the muezzin's call is
certainly no more intrusive
than the sound of church
bells.
If you ever had the poor
judgment, or bad luck, to get
a hotel room in Europe direct-
ly across from a church, you'd
understand. I once stayed at a
place in Paris called the
Trianon Palace (which it defi-
nitely was not). Good Left
Bank location for touring; bad
for sleeping.
I have never been troubled much by insomnia.
For some reason on that trip I couldn't get to
sleep, though, and as I lay awake for most of the
night, I could hear the bells tolling the quarter
George Cantor's e-mail address is
hours.
"It's 1:45," I'd say to myself. "I've got to get to
sleep now. OK. I'm really gonna do it. Almost
there. BONG. BONG. Ohmigod, now it's 2
o'clock. Got to get to sleep."
I walked around Paris for three days like an
escapee from the zombie jamboree.
So I don't know that Christians have a lot to
complain about it when it comes to religious
noise.
My mother's experience with the Stoliners (so-
called, I recently learned, because many of the
founders came from the
Russian town of Stolin) was
unusual.
For many reasons, Jews
have kept a low religious pro-
file. About the most raucous
thing we do is blow the sho-
far and rattle the Purim grog-
crers and I don't think those
sounds carry very far.
There was one time, how-
ever, when I took comfort in
the sounds of worship. I was
in Israel in 1993 at the time
of the Oslo Accords signing.
I arrived in Jerusalem on a
Friday and as twilight
approached, I walked to the
Montefiore windmill, taking
in the view of the Old City.
There is a place in every
city I love that I return to .
when I arrive to reaffirm that
I am really there. Montefiore
is that place in Jerusalem.
I stood there and listened
to the muezzin's call from
across the valley. The sound
of bells from the YMCA on
King David Street. The con-
versation of the devout as
they walked to shul for Shabbat services.
It was, for a brief time, a sacred concert of what
the Holy Land could be.
It faded like the twilight, but the memory
remains.
❑
gcantor@thejewishnews.com
Shabbat Candlelighting
"When I light my candles, I have a sense I am bringing my family into a different reality — where
time is suspended, space is filled with quietude and where we have only to pray, learn Torah and
draw closer to HaShem."
— Laurel Stuart-Fink, lawyer, West Bloomfield
Candlelighting
Candlelighting
Friday, May 7, 8:21 p.m.
Friday, May 14, 8:29 p.m.
Shabbat Ends
Shabbat Ends
Saturday, May 8, 9:29 p.m.
Saturday, May 15, 9:38 p.m.
To submit a candlelighting message, call Miriam Amzalak of the Lubavitch Women's Organization at (248) 548-6771 or e-mail• manizalakuno.com