Letters
Fight Campus Hate
I want to thank Editor Robert Sklar for
shining a much-needed light on the preva-
lence of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
on college campuses across the country
("Redressing Campus Hate:' March 22,
page 5). His message that "the Jewish
community must sharpen its focus on
campus" is particularly relevant to the
Metro Detroit Jewish community.
As most JN readers know by now,
the campus environment at some of
Michigan's universities has become poi-
sonous and volatile at times instead of
welcoming and supportive for its Jewish
students.
For example, during a recent week
alone, an anti-Israel group showed up
at the Wayne State University Board
of Governors meeting in Detroit and
demanded that WSU divest from com-
panies doing business with Israel. At
the meeting, one vocal Israel detractor
exclaimed, "the State of Israel must be dis-
mantled." Students on campus were also
subjected to a "mock Israeli checkpoint:'
offensive flyers promoting an anti-Israel
rally and disturbing chalk messages
scrawled all over campus.
While students at WSU and other col-
leges across Michigan have been moved
by the support from many members of
the Metro Detroit Jewish community in
response to our repeated calls for help,
the hard truth is that not everyone in the
community has rallied to support us.
I once again urge the entire Metro
Detroit Jewish community, from the gen-
eral Jewish community to Jewish groups
set up to assist students on campus, to
reinvigorate their efforts to help students
on campus and to be vocal in combating
hateful anti-Israel groups.
The result will be beneficial not just for
Jewish students, but also for Michigan's
universities.
Jonathan Schwartz
Farmington Hills
The JCRC Role
It appears that the signers of the March
15 letter to the editor ("Examining CAIR,"
page 6) may not fully understand the vital
role that the Jewish Community Relations
Council plays in the very racially, ethnically
diverse metropolitan Detroit community.
When, finally, somebody from a Muslim
organization steps forward and does what
Jews have long waited for and what few
Muslim leaders have done — condemn the
president of Iran who denies the Holocaust
and wants to "wipe Israel off the map" —
it should be acknowledged and welcomed.
Despite serious differences, it serves the
interest of our own community to talk to
people with whom we don't always agree.
Though our local relationships do not
reach the same magnitude, just imagine
where Israel would be if Menachem Begin
had never begun speaking to Anwar Sadat
or other Israeli leaders to the leaders of
Jordan. Even now, it is no secret that Israel
is quietly involved in negotiations with
Syria.
The Jewish News had it right in its Feb. 8
editorial ("Moments Worth Recognizing:'
page 27): "While it's easy to point out
things that are lacking, we should rec-
ognize and applaud what is taking place
while working for more."
Wendy Wagenheim, president; Todd Mendell,
president-elect; Beth Applebaum, Gail Katz,
vice presidents; Richard Nodel, secretary; Judy
Rosenberg, treasurer; Robert Cohen, executive
director; and six past presidents
Jewish Community Relations Council of
Metropolitan Detroit
Bloomfield Township
Plaudits To OU
We want to commend Oakland University
on being the first of our Metro Detroit
universities to offer a minor in Judaic
studies, and thank the JN for such excel-
lent coverage ("Reaching Rochester:'
March 15, page 17). We are fortunate to
live in a community with people like the
Schostaks and the Shaevskys who care
so much about offering Jewish learning
opportunities to our local college students.
Oakland University's Hillel program
is part of the Hillel Foundation of
Metropolitan Detroit (HMD). Based at
Wayne State University in Detroit, we
serve our local Jewish students on the
campuses of Oakland University, Wayne
State University, Lawrence Technological
University, the University of Detroit Mercy
and Oakland Community College. We also
sponsor community-wide student pro-
gramming throughout the Detroit area.
With the leadership of our new Oakland
University Hillel President Jereme
Goodman, and with the new minor
in Judaic studies, we look forward to
much growth in Jewish life on Oakland
University's campus.
Miriam Starkman
Hillel of Metro Detroit executive director
Detroit
In Every Generation
On the nights of April 2-3, Jews the world
over will sit down to the seder table — in
Israel only the first seder is celebrated —
in order to celebrate the coming out from
slavery in the land of Egypt into freedom
and nationhood in the land of Israel.
However, in spite of the seder being rich
in scintillating readings and replete with
the most beautiful and spirited hymns
— the most famous among them, Day
Dayenu, it would have been enough — the
most meaningful uttering we emit at this
most meaningful night in our Jewish cal-
endar is when we declare in unison that "in
every generation a person should see him-
self as if he himself came out of Egypt"
Indeed, the Egypt we are referring to is
not merely the actual one so many years
ago, but all the other ones that followed.
These are the catastrophes that befell
the Jewish people throughout the gen-
erations — including the one in Persia,
which we celebrated recently on Purim,
and culminating with the most horrible
and unimaginable of all, the Holocaust, a
watershed event in Jewish and world his-
tory still close enough to our times that
Next Month In History:
The Holocaust Remembered
April 1938: The Mauthausen con-
centration camp, near Linz, was
established shortly after the annexa-
tion of Austria to the Third Reich.
According to camp records thought
to be understated, 199,404 were
interned at Mauthausen; 119,000
died. Of those who died – as often
due to work conditions and lack of
food as to the gas chambers or kill-
ing fields – 38,120 were Jews.
April 2, 1947: Rudolf Hess, the first
commandant of the Auschwitz con-
centration camp, was sentenced to
death in Warsaw and hanged on a
gallows adjacent to the sprawling
camp's main gas chamber. More than
a million Jews were murdered at
Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945.
April 1983: The American Gathering
of Jewish Holocaust Survivors is
held in Washington, D.C., attracting
20,000 survivors and their families.
Taken from Encyclopaedia Judaka, 2nd Edition, © 2007,
www.encyclopaediajudiaca.com . C, 2007, Thomson Gale
How to Send Letters
We prefer letters relating to JN articles. We reserve the right to edit or
Which three talmudic prohibitions are the only ones that cannot be bro-
ken in order to save a life?
—Goldfein
•apinw pue Anlinpe
March 29 - 2007
Rachel Kapen
West Bloomfield
Joshua A. Lerner
Hillel of Metro Detroit Board president
MERV 'cha Don't Know
6
there are still people able to testify to it —
as well as the numerous wars of compul-
sion the State of Israel had to fight since its
inception in 1948 in order to stay alive.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda
Meir once said that the Jews do not have
the luxury of being pessimistic. So on that
rather optimistic note, let us hope and
pray that when we sit down this year to
the seder table, the ever-growing list of
catastrophes, of the "Egypts" that befell
us and from which we survived to tell the
story, will filially stop growing.
We had enough, dayenu.
:JaMSUy
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