Letters

Beyond Day Schools

The article "All About Education"
(Nov. 17, page 29) describes the
noble initiative proposed by the
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit for seeking financial
resources to secure the future and
stability of our local day schools.
As a past president of the com-
munity-wide United Hebrew
School system, I recall with pride
the educational achievements and
contributions the UHS provided to
the Detroit Jewish community by
the meaningful Jewish education it
gave to a multitude of our Jewish
youth in past years. In fact, many
of our community leaders in those
years were products of the UHS
system.
Jewish day schools stand on
their own merits. But they are not,
or will they be, the exclusive or
main educational source for pro-
viding our youth with a strong
Jewish identity, commitment and
Jewish lifestyle.
I have no doubt that Federation
President Pete Alter and CEO
Robert Aronson have a strong
sense of value of the after-school
educational programs of the con-
gregational, secular and humanis-
tic systems that exist in our com-
munity. But Mr. Aronson's remark
of "offering no offense to congre-
gational schools" invokes a sense
of gratuitous deprecation concern-
ing their educational value and
involvement with so many of our
youth. We are all well aware of the
pluralistic nature of Jewish prac-
tice and lifestyles that characterize
our community.
Mr. Alter's statement that "pro-
moting education is the No.1 goal
of the Federation" carries with it a
responsibility to support the var-
ied institutional school systems
that constitute our Jewish educa-
tional network. One would hope
that the Federation would exhibit
the same passion for the future of
these schools as it does for the day

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schools. To do less would be
unjust.

Julius Harwood

West Bloomfield

Lifelong Learning

Federation's new Jewish educa-
tion initiative ("All About
Education," Nov. 17, page 29),
seems fixated on day schools to
the exclusion of just about every-
thing else. Not only does it
appear to write off the children
in congregation-based religious
schools, but it also fails to
acknowledge the importance of
lifelong Jewish learning as a criti-
cal component of any truly effec-
tive, holistic approach.
In our Detroit Jewish commu-
nity, generations of adults have
been largely shut out of the
power and beauty of Torah
Lishma, of lifelong Jewish learn-
ing. Only recently, thanks to the
Florence Melton Adult Mini-
School of Metro Detroit, is this
history of communal failure
being reversed.
Why isn't the Melton Mini-
School also a "pillar" of
Federation's new Jewish educa-
tion initiative? This internation-
ally praised lifelong learning pro-
gram (of which Detroit has a
local franchise, co-sponsored by
Federation's Alliance for Jewish
Education and the Jewish
Community Center) has the
potential to affect a huge number
of people in our community,
both directly and indirectly. With
an infusion of high-profile
Federation support, such as
increasing the number of classes,
hiking teacher salaries, and offer-
ing tuition scholarships for those
who would otherwise not be able
to afford to enroll, the Melton
Mini-School of Metro Detroit
could turn thousands of Jewish
parents, grandparents, aunts and
uncles into lifelong Jewish learn-

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ers — role models who will
inspire future generations of
Jewish children to love Torah and
Judaism and live an active, con-
nected Jewish life.
Recently, I was called by the
Federation demographic survey
team: Sadly but not surprisingly,
the handful of community prior-
ities the survey asked me to rank
in importance did not include
adult Jewish education. Nor was
there an opportunity in the sur-
vey for respondents to provide
unscripted feedback — to sug-
gest a community funding prior-
ity that the survey designers may
have left out.
Although so far the evidence
continues to disappoint, I contin-
ue to hope that some day lifelong
Jewish learning will be a top-tier
priority for the Jewish Federation
of Metropolitan Detroit.

Nancy F. Kaplan

West Bloomfield

Heartfelt Attributes

The comments concerning the
Phoenix clan and Joaquin
Phoenix' mother, Heart, in Nate
Bloom's Celebrity Jews feature on
Nov. 17 (Page 56) were unkind and
inaccurate.
Heart is not a celebrity; her chil-
dren are. You misspelled her maid-
en name and derisively accused
her of riding on the fame of her
children while flitting from "one
new age cause to another." I have
known the family for many, many
years. From personal contact, I
know that neither is true.
Heart has been active in the
same spiritual and environmental
causes for years. She works tire-
lessly for the causes she believes
in, and is a better and more spiri-
tual person than many who call
themselves religious.
Heart has dedicated herself to
making the world a better place
— a strong Jewish value. To deni-

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grate her and her family for
allegedly not giving monetarily to
Jewish causes and contrasting
them to Christian celebrities who
have is inappropriate and arro-
gant.
Heart and her children, like all
of us, support what is meaningful
to them. They do not pass judg-
ment on those who choose to fol-
low different paths, and neither
should anyone else.

Judy Nadelberg

West Bloomfield

A Step: Farther

While we appreciate Editor
Robert Sklar's acknowledging the
Jewish Community Council's
quick response to the Iranian
president's call last month for the
destruction of Israel (Editor's
Letter, "The Wrong Context," Nov.
17), it is important that others
take action as well.
We encourage Jewish News
readers to thank their members
of Congress, as all Michigan rep-
resentatives voted "yea" on House
Resolution 523 condemning the
Iranian president's remarks, and
urge Secretary-General Kofi
Annan to launch an investigation
into possible violations of the
U.N. charter based on Iran's call
for the destruction of another
U.N. member state (Israel).

Wendy Wagenheim

president
Jewish Community Council
of Metropolitan Detroit
Bloomfield Township

No Entitlement

Trying to explain the Arab and
now the Muslim war against
Israel, a letter writer concludes,
based on the Koran, that
'Traditional Islam is a plague of
hate" ("In Search of Truth:' Nov.

10, page 6). He says,"Few Arab
Christians oppose Israel." I hap-
pen to know quite a few Arab -
Christians and also something
about Islam in history. Neither of
those propositions is true.
Instead of the Koran, read the
Passover Haggadah, "in every
generation, there are some who
rise against us to annihilate us."
The generation before the Nazis
called them pogromists. After the
Nazis, they were mostly Arabs.
Now, after two generations of
Israel trying to appease the per-
secutor; it's not just Arabs but
most Muslims.
A pattern emerges. The Nazis
and pogromists helped populate
the Land of Israel with Jewish
refugees. Then the Arabs sent
more. Then the Jews, turning out
to be stronger than anyone imag-
ined, rejected most of what
Jewish armies had bravely cap-
tured, our ancestors' land, that
Zionism and the Bible always
claimed for Israel. Trying to
appease our prosecutors, we
offered them our very land!
Israel kept conceding to weak-
ness, making them doubt Jewish
resolve and Israel's legitimacy.
If our persecutors were strong
enough, they would forthrightly
drive the Jews out. By not doing
the same to them, successive
Jewish governments convinced
them that the Jews are wrong as
well as weak.
Jealousy, national pride, feel-
ings of disappointed entitlement,
from Paris to Hebron, that's the
flame that's making Muslims hot.
The Koran helps feed it, but it's
appeasement that pours on the
gas. The Jewish people could do a
lot to quench the fire by standing
up against those who would
annihilate us and show them
clearly that they are not entitled.

Michael Dallen

Detroit

Letters on page 8

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December 1 2005