Spirituality
A Lifetime Of Service
Bea Sacks' social action and justice programs help heal the world.
N
Vivian DeGain
Special to the Jewish News
of long after the 1967 riots in
Detroit, Southfield High School
teacher Bea Sacks recognized
that her all-white student community
needed a curriculum to learn about diver-
sity and how
discrimination
against minorities
limited their lives.
So the history and
American govern-
ment teacher cre-
ated a new class
called Minority
Groups.
"It became a
Bea Sacks
very popular:' the
former teachers
said of the course
that also was taught
in other Michigan
school districts.
Social action
and tikkun olam
(repairing the
world) have been
driving forces
throughout her
life. Now, 40 years
later,
Sacks is being
The late Abraham
honored
for her
Sacks during World
work
by
Temple
War II
Emanu-El, which
recently named
the Bea Sacks Social Action Fund in her
honor, and by the Michigan Women's
Foundation, which gave her its Trillium
Lifetime Achievement Award on May 1 in
Novi (and on May 8 in Grand Rapids).
At a recent Shabbat service, Temple
Emanu-El members applauded her
accomplishments and the importance of
tikkun olam.
"We felt it was time to thank Bea for
all that she has done for Temple Emanu-
El and our community," said President
Dolores Galea. "She and her late husband,
Abraham, were founding members of
Temple Emanu-El more than 50 years ago.
Bea has initiated countless programs over
the years to promote social action and
social justice, and she has served both as
the longtime Social Action Committee
chairman and as temple president for
three years in the early 1990s!'
Bea volunteered for the Red Cross during the war.
Rabbi Joseph Klein said, "As we honor
Bea, we are reminded of what is expected
of us. Bea models for us — in her dedica-
tion and devotion to the congregation and
in her personal efforts to make a differ-
ence in our world — the covenant-con-
nection that is the mitzvah of commanded
righteousness. She is a Jewish hero!'
Robert Sedler co-founded the temple's
Social Action Committee with Sacks, who
lives in Huntington Woods.
"Bea is the heart and soul of our Social
Action Committee said Sedler, a Wayne
State University law professor. "Bea started
mitzvah projects (as a component of
b'nai mitzvah student preparation) at our
temple, and the idea is taken as common-
place in all Reform temples now and many
Conservative!'
Numerous past projects include a
seminar about the 50th anniversary of the
landmark Supreme Court civil rights case,
Brown vs. the Board of Education. Projects
close to her own heart are efforts for the
military. Abraham Sacks served in the
Army during World War II, and she volun-
teered for the Red Cross as a blood donor
recruiter and an ambulance staff assis-
tant. For many Chanukahs, Bea has col-
lected donations to send candy to Jewish
American soldiers through the Jewish
Chaplains Service in New York, where she
grew up, and more recently, for CDs for
wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army
and the Bethesda Naval hospitals.
Temple Emanu-El's Social Action
Committee, under her leadership, collects
rent money, medical supplies and Jewish
ritual items for a developing Jewish com-
munity in Brovary, Ukraine, through Yad
L'Yad (hand to hand). The committee
holds a bottle-and-can drive to send funds
to a South African hospice, assisting the
AIDS crisis. The committee also hosts
food drives and temple dinners to assist
the hungry locally, nationally and inter-
nationally for Yad Ezra, Forgotten Harvest,
St. Mark's Food Pantry in Macomb County
as well as for the victims of the Asian
Tsunami and Hurricanes Andrew and
Katrina.
Anne Costello, temple member said,
"What is most inspiring is that Bea doesn't
consider herself to be very religious or
spiritual. She does good for goodness'
sake. Not because we are impelled to do
so as Jews, but because there is need.
To me, that is the purest form of tikkun
olam. And this is not a notion Bea tends
to in her leisure. She has made it her life,
whether working for Sander Levin for 25
years, organizing for Better Schools in
Berkley, or marching on Washington!'
Don Cohen, former temple executive
director and a 50-year member, said Bea
is very effective at getting volunteers for
any good cause.
"Bea is a bulldog;' he said. "She gets
her teeth around a thing and doesn't let
go. Many things at temple, now and since
its beginning, wouldn't get done without
her."
Most recently, he said, the Social Action
Committee decided to "go green!' Sacks
led the way to replace temple's light bulbs
in the school.
Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious
Action Center of Reform Judaism in
Washington, D.C., sent a tribute for her
service. He quoted her favorite saying
from Pirkei Avot, "You are not required to
finish the work, neither are you at liberty
to abstain from it!' ❑
Vivian DeGain is a freelance writer in
Rochester Hills.
May 8 • 2008
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