HEALTH & FITNESS

Providence from page 31

for the past five years.
Michael Walch, Shalom Providence
director and a Temple Israel member,
will manage a dedicated telephone line
to answer questions for Jewish patients
and Providence staff members. Barbara
Haddad, Jewish Family Service LifeLinks
director, will help patients and staff iden-
tify and access services from the Jewish
community.
"You are within a mile and a half of the
largest concentration of Orthodox Jews in
the metropolitan area," Rabbi Klainberg
told Providence. "They're the most strict,
the most observant. They have certain
needs that we can help you meet. The idea
is to create a comfort level that is special
to Providence Hospital."
That nearby community is also home
to Jews of all denominations who may be
elderly, indigent, or immigrants from the
Soviet Union, Rabbi Freedman added.
"Those immigrants are coming from a
very weak health care system," he said. If
language is a problem, translators can be
provided. And, coming from an autocratic
system, "they may be afraid of authority
and can be secretive
Rabbi Nelson gave his definition of the
Conservative movement in joke form: "The

difference is the crease in the yarmulke,"
he said. "I keep my kippot in my pocket.
Orthodox always wear it. Reform may or
may not have it!'
Whereas, the Orthodox don't ride on the
Sabbath, Nelson said, "We now think it is
better to ride to a synagogue than to stay
at home."

The Reform View

A gasp arose from the audience when
Rabbi Freedman, in introducing Rabbi
Tisdale, said that Temple Israel is the larg-
est congregation in the United States.
"It's always just me and the boys,"
Tisdale said, including her male counter-
parts in her smile. The Reform movement
is the most liberal of the denominations
represented, she told her listeners.
As a woman rabbi, she said, she
might be doubly useful. "A (non-affili-
ated Jewish) woman declined spiritual
care in hospice she told them. "But she
heard about me and I ended up doing her
funeral.
"The Reform movement is west of here,"
Tisdale said. "We often have interfaith
families. We want to hold those hands just
as much as the Jewish families. These are
things that my movement allows. My con-

Providence President Diane Radloff met with more than 20 area rabbinical leaders
to learn how the hospital "could close some gaps in our services."

gregants might be uncomfortable with an
Orthodox rabbi coming into their room:'
You will have people identify themselves
as Jewish, who do not have a religious prac-
tice, Shalom Providence's Michael Walch
added. "We are going to be dependent on
you as to when our people need service."

Questions, Questions

Providence staff members had questions

and comments:
"How important is it to differentiate
whether they are Orthodox, Conservative
or Reform?" one asked.
"Our rabbis are all trained to be patient-
centered," Rabbi Freedman responded.
"All the rabbis cross the lines very easily. I
wouldn't worry too much about it unless

Providence on page 37

s pith" Helps Extend Project Eruv

Judith Doner Berne

Special to the Jewish News

ust as it takes a community
to raise a child, it takes a
community to extend an eruv.
The eruv at issue encloses
Huntington Woods, Oak Park, Lathrup
Village and Southfield, south of 11 Mile
Road. But it doesn't extend to the area
south of Mount Vernon Road and west
of Greenfield Road, where Providence
Hospital is located.
"It's one of the only major cit-
ies in the country that has an eruv
that doesn't include a hospital," said
Rabbi Yissachar Wolf, administrator of
Project Eruv of Oak Park, Inc.
Cooperation among Providence
Hospital, the Orthodox Jewish com-
munity, Oakland County, the city of
Southfield and Detroit Edison will
expand the eruv to include the hospital
and a CVS 24-hour pharmacy at 10
Mile and Southfield roads.
"That's how projects get done,"
said Gary Tressel, senior associate at
Hubbell Roth & Clark, the Bloomfield

32

July 26 2007

Hills engineering firm that is coordinat-
ing the project for Providence.
After months of discussion, con-
struction was scheduled to begin in
mid-July and take about six weeks to
complete, according to Tressel. It is
part of the Catholic hospital's Shalom
Providence project, launched July 16.
"Orthodox Jewish law ordains the
Sabbath as a day of rest during which
various categories of work can't be
done," Rabbi Wolf said. "One cat-
egory is a prohibition against 'carry-
ing' — specifically, the transferring of
an object from a public to a private
domain and vice versa, or the move-
ment of an object within a public
domain.
An eruv permits carrying into the
public areas on the Sabbath, he said. "
It's accomplished by legally surround-
ing the area by acceptable enclosures
and by leasing the right or permission
for the enclosed area. Jewish law then
considers the designated area as a
single private domain in which trans-
ferring or carrying is permitted.
"The hospital was never included

because all their utility wires were
underground," Wolf said. "We didn't
expect it to be able to be done."
"It came up a hundred times
before," seconded Rabbi E.B. (Bunny)
Freedman, director of the Jewish
Hospice and Chaplaincy Network and
a trustee of the Providence Health
Foundation. "We didn't know what door
to knock on."
Then, so the story goes, along came
Ida Warshay, a veteran of 15 years
in health care fundraising, whom
Providence hired in 2006 to direct its
fund-raising arm. "Nothing much was
going on until this firebrand [Warshay]
got started," Freedman said.
"My job is to raise money," Warshay
said matter of factly. "I noticed there
wasn't much local Jewish community
support." That led her to ask: "'Why
isn't the eruv around the hospital?'
We literally did a drive around to see
where we could extend the eruv."
It helped that Warshay, married and
the mother of three, was part of the
Oak Park Orthodox community.
It helped that hospital President Diane

Ida Warshay: "Providence is the hos-

pital that is within close proximity to

the largest concentration of the Jewish

community in Southeast Michigan."

Radloff, who came on board about the
sametime,signaled a different approachto
multiculturalism. She wantedto reach out
not just toJewish but also to Hispanic and
Muslim constituencies.
"We began an assessment of the
communities we serve," Radloff said,