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A Critical Medical Need

TO MAKE
Dry Bones ENOUGH
YOUR H HEAD SPIN.

AND NOW...

COMING TO YOU..

side from Alaska and the District of
Columbia, Michigan has the worst rate of
unemployment in the country, according to
a U.S. government Web site updated on Jan. 25. At
7.3 percent, Michigan residents are suffering now,
and they have suffered for three to four years already.
When joblessness hits, people hold on to what
they can while they search for work. If work doesn't
come, they begin not only to lose their self-esteem
and self-confidence, but their houses, cars and med-
ical insurance.
When medical insurance lapses, people forget
about preventive health; they suffer through colds
and the flu; they begin to use emergency rooms as
their primary health providers.
In this country, 41 million people
between the ages of 18 and 65 have no
medical insurance. Many more than we
expect are Jewish. And part of being Jewish is help-
ing others with a life-endangering need.
Sensing a great need in our own community,
Jewish Family Service, with funding from the Jewish
Fund, conducted a needs assessment survey regard-
ing medical insurance among Detroit's Jewish com-
munity. Out of about 96,000 Jews, up to 10 percent
or more than 9,000 people between ages 18 and 65
have no medical insurance. We can't turn our backs
on such a growing problem or pretend it can't possi-
bly exist in a community as affluent as ours.
What emerged to fill that gap is Project Chessed, a
collaborative effort between JFS, the Jewish Fund,
area hospitals and Jewish physicians — all dedicated
to true chessea or loving kindness. More than 150
Jewish physicians representing all specialties have
signed on to volunteer their services in their own

offices where dignity can be main-
tained, and six medical centers have
done the same.
Patients who qualify are given
Project Chessed ID cards that
resemble medical insurance cards
entitling them to free care or care at
a nominal fee. Prescription aid also
is provided. At every turn, respect is
a hallmark.
The project was officially
•
• • •
•
launched with Feb. 24 JN cover
•
• •
•
•
story, "No Patient Left Behind."
One week later, program director
Rachel Yoskowitz at the
West Bloomfield-based
JFS already has received
three checks in the mail
and several other inquiries about
LA,)14 2R.14
donations, had about 50 more
physicians sign up to volunteer and
about 50 people calling who are in
need of the program.
"The need is so great," she says,
"and the resources so finite."
Here's a chance to be part of the
solution by joining Project Chessed
• •
•
• •
in its ground-breaking work, which
• •
•
is sure to become a national model
for other communities interested in
covered by these programs.
taking care of their own.
With the rich spirit of community cooperation
More physician volunteers are needed and donors
turned toward the mitzvah of loving kindness,
can help defray the cost of providing interim pre-
Project Chessed is destined to make a difference in
scription drugs for those applying to drug-company
many lives. ❑
assistance programs or for those whose drugs aren't

It Happens Every Spring

Those springs always lasted too long for me.
er. It's a time when you can get close to the
By the end of March, all the stories had been
players. Access is unrushed and no one yet has
told twice and all the favorite restaurants revis-
been turned sour through failure.
ited. Most of the smaller media had gone
The pitchers run laps across the outfield dur-
home and only the regular beat writers were
ing games. The crowds are older, more knowl-
left behind.
edgeable and appreciative, just happy to be
You had the sense of a party that had gone
there. Prospects, most of whom you'll never
flat, but which you were not allowed to leave.
hear of again, get a chance to see big league
The exhibition games had lost their charm.
pitching before being swallowed up by Class
GEORGE
Everyone wanted the season to start already. I
AA.
was usually the first one on the bus when we
Lakeland has changed so much. Last time I was CANTOR
Reality
left Lakeland for home.
there, in 2003, I barely recognized the place. It
The old Holiday Inn closed years ago and
Check
has ridden the central Florida boom. There is so
the
last time I was there, a barbed wire fence
much traffic, they had to build a toll road to
surrounded
the deserted property. Nothing
encircle the town.
looked the same.
When I first stayed there it was a struggle to find a
Only later in life did I really come to embrace the
place to buy a Newsweek magazine, and the ABC
meaning of spring training. The renewal, the sweet
channel was a flickering shadow on the TV set.
innocence of it.
The Holiday Inn where we stayed was run by a
I treasure the memories of dinners in Tampa with •
Jewish franchisee that had come over from Belgium. I
the
other writers, the long car trips to Bradenton and
heard that he got inside information about Disney's big
Sarasota, the rickety press boxes. I miss Hall of Fame
plans for Orlando and became rich in real estate there.
sportswriter Joe Falls, who shared so much of it with
There was a synagogue in Lakeland, too, a lovely lit-
me. I miss the laughter.
tle building on Lake Hollingsworth. I regret to say I
It was good to be young in spring, and the picture in
never went to services, even though spring training
the paper brought it all back. ❑
overlapped with Passover a few times.

A

WilRR R

EDITORIAL

A

11 it took was one picture in the newspaper.
There were three Tigers sitting in the sun-
shine at spring training and laughing, the new
season stretching out before them like an undiscovered
country. And I was immediately back in Lakeland,
with that warm breeze coming off Lake Parker, carry-
ing the smell of freshly mown grass. .
It's been nearly 40 years since my first spring training
there. So young and full of myself as a newly minted
baseball writer that I didn't even know what I didn't
know.
Baseball is in sorry shape these days. The game is big-
ger than Yankees vs. Red Sox, a fact to which the East
Coast media seem oblivious. Small market teams, with
few exceptions, can compete for only short periods, if
at all, before they lose their star players.
The sport venerates its past, and that's why the
steroids mess, which threatens to wipe out any mean-
ingful comparisons with the records that went before, is
so dangerous. But in spring training, all that is wiped
clean and we're young again. The pace is so much slow-

George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor@thejewishnews.com .

STRAIGHT FROM THE
MIDDLE EAST..

.

3/10
2005

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