Front Lines
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JNenlin
JNF's Green Sunday
Help raise funds for Israel, eat and have a chance to win prizes as a
volunteer for the Jewish National Fund's Green Sunday phone-a-thon
on Sunday, Dec. 2. It's also a chance to show the people of Israel that
the Jewish community of Michigan stands with them.
Volunteers can choose the time and place most convenient for
them. Shifts are from 9:20 a.m.-noon or 2-4 p.m. Dec. 2 at either the
Weight Watchers Building, 28555 Orchard Lake, Farmington Hills or
the Quaker Office Building, 27600 Farmington (southeast corner of
Farmington and 12 Mile), Farmington Hills. Please be prompt for a
brief training. Volunteers at the Quaker location need to bring per-
sonal cell phones.
Volunteers can register by Nov. 30 by e-mail at tgutkovitch@jnf.org
or by calling (248) 324-3080. Include your name, e-mail address,
cell phone, mailing address and which session and location you will
attend. Walk-in volunteers also will be accepted on Dec. 2.
- Keri Guten Cohen, story development editor
Synagogue Library Goes Electronic
The library catalogue at Congregation B'nai Moshe in West Bloomfield
is the first Jewish library in the area to be electronically accessible.
Using a Web site established by the Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit — www.JewishLibrariesDetroit.com — both
synagogue members and non-members can now see if B'nai Moshe
has a book and if it's available for loan.
B'nai Moshe will allow non-members to borrow books, said librar-
ian Sherry Wasserman, but they will have to come into the synagogue
library to register.
Wasserman said several area Jewish libraries are working toward
converting their catalogues, including Temple Beth El, Congregation
Beth Shalom and the Jewish Community Center library. She said
Temple Israel and Hillel Day School also own the software.
The JewishLibrariesDetroit Web site also links to the National
Association of Libraries, which has a number of electronic resources,
including Jewish Values Finders that reviews new Jewish children's
books.
Wasserman, of Huntington Woods, who works with an electronic
users group through the Jewish Library Association Michigan Chapter,
hopes to eventually see a Web site with links to many Jewish librar-
ies and an inter-library loan system. "We are very proud to be No. 1,"
she said, "but we don't want to be the only one. We very much want to
make this a broader-based community resource."
Founding students of
the Lubavitch cheder in
the 1960s with teacher
Rabbi Bentzion Stein
of Oak Park are Rabbi
Chaim Block of San
Antonio, Alan Zekelman
of Bloomfield Hills,
Rabbis Yossi Potter of
Acton, Mass., and Yossi
Shemtov of Toledo.
Zekelman Funds Lubavitch Cheder
At a gathering in Manhattan on Nov. 11, after the International
Chabad Conference, about 100 alumni of Oak Park's Lubavitch Cheder
and Yeshiva honored Alan Zekelman with song and dance at the Puck
Building at New York University.
Zekelman has given the yeshivah about $3 million to build the
future Harry and Wanda Zekelman Center at the boys' school.
A veteran of the University of Rochester's Chabad House from
his undergraduate days, Zekelman started coming to the Lubavitch
Cheder more regularly when he needed a place to say Kaddish for his
mother. Though the students and faculty were warm and welcoming,
Zekelman was appalled by the deteriorating state of their building.
The new structure will be nearly twice the size of the existing build-
ing.
"This building needs a coat of paint:' Zekelman said. "This is prob-
ably the most intensely used building in the city of Detroit, but it is
also showing it."
Alumni had important memories of the schools. "The cheder has
an impact on what I do today:' said Avraham Berkowitz, 31, now a
Chabad emissary in Russia. "It was in this cheder — this school —
that the seeds were planted, that I would devote my life to the service
of the Jewish people."
Said Zekelman, "These people — each and every one of them
— are scattered around the globe on a mission of shlichos, bringing
Yiddishkeit [Judasim] to far-flung places. So my family's investment in
the yeshivah isn't just a local investment. We will have the opportunity
to see the investment touch the entire world of Jewry"
- Sharon Udasin, special to the Jewish News
- Alan Hitsky, associate editor
Leslie Kleiman agrees with kosher consumers that there was a short-
age of turkeys before Thanksgiving.
Kleiman is owner and president of Morris Kosher Poultry on Eight
Mile Road in Hazel Park, the sole area wholesale distributor of Empire
Kosher Poultry. He also handles other kosher brands.
"Demand was extremely high this year:' says Kleiman, "and there
were some shortages:' especially in larger-size, frozen birds. The week
before Thanksgiving, Kleiman began receiving fresh turkeys in the
20-24-pound range.
Kleiman says prices were higher this year. "In the past, the markets
would use turkeys as a loss-leader:' charging less than the cost to
bring customers into the store. "Then they'd make it up on cranberry
sauce." But this year, he says, prices were affected by rising prices for
feed, production and fuel.
In addition, Kleiman says Empire has cut its poultry production
and some of its products in order to remain profitable. Other produc-
ers have tried to fill in the gap, he says, "but supply was having a hard
time meeting demand."
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November 29 s 2007
www.JNonline.us
Teen2Teen Site
You've seen the printed sec-
tion each month in the JN,
now Teen2Teen goes online!
Though the Web site is for
Jewish teens by Jewish
teens, other generations can
check it out, too.
Only at JNt2t.com .
E-Newsletter
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ignate the kinds of stories
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ter.
Only at JNonline.us. Just
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menu near the top of the
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Latest From Israel
Want the most current
news from Israel? Check
our streaming news from
Ynetnews.com for continu-
ous updates and longer news,
opinion and feature stories.
And look at the center of our
Homepage for an Israel story
that changes twice daily.
Just visit JNonline.us and
click on a scrolling story on
the left.
Celebrations!
Turkeys Were Hiding
A10
This Week
Alan Hitsky, associate editor
Student Health
Beaumont Hospital cardiologist Dr. Marc Brodsky goes over
results of a heart screening with West Bloomfield High School
ninth-grader Jamie Shires, 14, of West Bloomfield. Beaumont
staff screened approximately 250 students recently at the high
school for conditions that may lead to sudden cardiac arrest.
Several student athletes from Metropolitan Detroit have died
in recent years due to this condition, signs of which are typi-
cally not included in a high school physical. The Royal Oak-
based Beaumont staff have screened about 1,000 students to
date, including ones at West Bloomfield High.
Find weekly listings of births,
b'nai mitzvah, engagements,
weddings and anniversaries
online as well as past sim-
chahs all online. They are all
bundled under each week's
publication date.
Just visit JNonline.us and
click on Lifecycles on the
left.
This week's poll question:
Is cost the major reason peo-
ple don't join a synagogue?
Visit the JNonline.us
homepage, below the left
menu, to cast your vote.