Opinion
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Editorial
A Teen Barometer
W
hen the B'nai B'rith Youth
Organization spun away from
B'nai B'rith International five
years ago, it was seeking an infusion of
new capital. It found the money ... and a
new way of doing business.
BBYO, America's largest Jewish youth
group and the Jewish community's front-
line organization in reaching under-affili-
ated young Jews, is on sounder financial
footing and doing even more outreach. If
that means engaging Jewish teens outside
the AZA-BBG umbrella, so be it.
The changes at BBYO have been dra-
matic. The national office in Washington,
D.C., has grown from three professionals
in 2001 to 25 today, led by 36-year-old
Executive Director Matt Grossman. The
influx of new, young staff has led to
wonderful, new ideas, combining the
traditional BBYO platform of youth-led
"fraternities" (Aleph Zedek Aleph) and
"sororities" (B'nai B'rith Girls) with social
action and broader Jewish opportunities.
Barbara Horowitz of West Bloomfield
is the mother of four former BBYOers.
An enthusiastic supporter of BBYO, she
has been on the Michigan Region adult
board for seven years and now serves as
chairperson.
BBYO, she says, is doing a wonderful job
"of shaping kids, of helping them build an
image of themselves, leadership capabili-
ties and a social life out of high school.
There is a whole dimension" to BBYO of
providing Jewish teens "a different under-
standing of Judaism and a Jewish pride"
that many do not receive in religious
school or at the synagogue.
The new initiatives appeal to today's
teens, some of whom would prefer to
attend a mega-event than be in an AZA
or BBG chapter. For that reason, Michigan
Region last spring hosted its second annu-
al fashion show and party with 70 AZA
and BBG members modeling the clothing
for hundreds of guests. It was fundraising
with an extra purpose.
BBYO is also conducting college tours.
It takes groups of members and unaffili-
ated Jewish teens to the Michigan State
University and University of Michigan
campuses for a weekend to meet the col-
lege Hillel professionals and students who
are BBYO alumni and to sample university
life and campus Jewish life.
Summer programs for BBYO members
used to center on leadership training at
places like Starlight, Pa. Now they include
camps in Wisconsin and California, tours
of Israel under BBYO sponsorship for
both members and non-members, Jewish
Dry Bones
THE WEST BANK
PALESTINIANS NO
LONGER WANT A
WAD LINK TO
GAZA
44
raw
BECAUSE ISRAEL IS
NOW A BUFFER THAT
BLOCKS A MAMAS
INVASION
immersion programs,
communal service pro-
grams, a social justice
bus trip and wilderness
camping.
Arnie Weiner, the
director of Michigan
THE UNEXPECTED
Region BBYO for nearly
ANSWER TO YEARS
40 years, announced at
OF MIDEAST
the organization's annual
STRIFE TURNED
meeting this spring that
OUT TO BE
he will leave his posi-
tion next May. Arnie, the
perennial teenager and
the face of BBYO for tens
of thousands of Michigan
teens, is making sure the
transition in program-
• It ►itsi
www.drybonesblog.com
ming and leadership will
be a smooth one.
In the game of numbers, Michigan is
Jewish community as adults. With every
one of the largest BBYO regions in the
teen it touches, BBYO increases those
nation, with a yearly membership in the
chances.
range of 900 to 1,100 teens. But with its
Barbara Horowitz says the B'nai B'rith
expanded mission, membership in BBYO
Youth Organization is continuing "to do
isn't the only number that counts.
what we have in the past, but we continue
The recent Jewish Federation of
to add to it."
Metropolitan Detroit population study
BBYO continues to matter.
showed that Jewish teens who participate
in some kind of youth group are much
E-mail letters of no more than 150 words to:
more likely to participate in the organized letters@thejewishnews.com .
►
Reality Check
Uncertain Fanfare
M
y old office at the
Detroit News looked
out on the Fort
Shelby Hotel. The idea that this
sad, empty hulk of a building
with trees growing on its roof
could be restored to life would
have struck me as absurd.
In fact, when we discussed
those plans once at an editorial
board meeting, someone said he
would eat the cornerstone the
day the place reopened and served its first
meal. Better get a fork and napkin ready.
It's going to happen.
The Fort Shelby's return from the dead
removed my final doubts about the valid-
ity of downtown's restoration. There are
many other promising signs. New loft
apartments, the RiverWalk, plans for
the coming of Rock Financial and a new
hockey arena in Foxtown that would free
up more waterfront land for development.
Against all my expectations, Kwame
Kilpatrick seems to have located the yel-
low brick road to adulthood and, apart
from a few ridiculous lapses,
has performed reasonably
well in his second term as
mayor.
And while all these won-
derful things are happening,
the greatest school disap-
pearance in American urban
history is going on. I still
find it hard to get my mind
around the fact that places
like Winship Elementary and
Redford High are being shut down.
These were flagship schools when I was
growing up, places that families moved to
when other parts of the system started to
decline. They haven't been that way in a
long time, of course, but part of my mind
is still stuck somewhere in 1957.
It is absolutely reasonable that a district
built for a population of almost 2 million
has to shrink. Detroit will never have any-
where close to that number of residents
again. Still the good news in one part of
town is balanced by the continuing out-
pouring of the middle class in another.
It will be 40 years next week since the
riots that transformed the city. That event
has been the subject of more revisionist
history than any other I know of. Now it is
supposed to have been a rebellion. Anyone
who recalls the Detroit before 1967 as a
more livable place than now is judged
guilty of racist memory — especially by
those who never knew that other city and
whose expertise on all matters relating to
Detroit were formed while living elsewhere.
If we are to talk honestly about Detroit's
recent past without considering the pos-
sibility that it was crime that savaged the
city beyond all recognition and gave tens
of thousands of erstwhile residents good
reason to hit the road, I don't think there
will ever be an understanding between the
urbans and ex-urbanites here.
Politicians love to bray that racism is
responsible for higher insurance rates in
the city, as if they could shame the actu-
arial tables out of existence. It is Detroit's
rate of auto theft and pilferage from stores
that drives those rates up. But let's not talk
about that.
In every American city that has experi-
enced a true renaissance the critical ele-
ments have been young people with lots of
money who choose to live there instead of
the suburbs and an energetic community
of foreign immigrants.
In both cases, it demands a wide, inclu-
sive vision of what a city ought to be. But
the defining goal of Detroit's government,
which I think accurately reflects the beliefs
of a majority of its residents, is maintain-
ing the city as a black community and to
view with suspicion any other group that
wants to join the party.
Its insistence upon holding on to poli-
cies and institutions that the city can no
longer afford betrays an attitude of control
at all costs.
It is an odd perversion of civic pride,
but with rare exceptions it is how Detroit
operates. Forty years out and still no way
home. ❑
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aol.com.
July 19 • 2007
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