PO RE 6 1 1 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