C 0 01 01U 1.1 i T

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Ladder of achievement

Emphasis on education helps Chaldeans and Jews climb

By Alan Stamm and Justin Fisette

METRO DETROIT JEWISH POPULATION

Wayne State,
University
of Michigan
and Michigan
State
University
top Jewish
alumni list.

39%

Wayne State University

20%

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

14%

Michigan State University

6% ... . _Oakland Community College

21%

Western Michigan University,
Oakland University, Walsh
College and Others

70 September 2 • 2010

JN

Portals to progress

Each community's arrivals, coming from cultures that value education, saw
schools as doorways to careers, secure incomes, assimilation and overcoming
inequality "The drive for education comes from a sense of accomplishment by
oneself and their parents, and a sense of honor for the family," says Fr. Kalabat.
"We used the Jewish community as an example," adds Josie Sarafa, former
bilingual supervisor for the Birmingham School District. "They were feverish to
send their children to school, wanted them to have that education and were suc-
cessful businesspeople. We strived for the same thing."
While public schools are social equalizers — part of the fabled melting pot
— many Jews and Chaldeans choose faith-based settings that reinforce religious
heritage, pride and purpose. "Jewish kids who graduate from Jewish day school,
studies show, are more likely to be involved in everything Jew-
ish than kids who went to public schools," says Steve Freedman,
head of school at Hillel Day School in Farmington Hills. "We are
so
integrated into American culture in society, the challenge is to
w
maintain that sense of Jewish identity. Education helps."
His school, founded 52 years ago at two rented rooms in Detroit,
now serves more than 600 students from early childhood through

•
•
•
•
II
• • •
••

.00

0
0

Some form of Jewish education

ersonal gains entwine with Jewish and Chaldean community gains as
tightly as ties to their ancestral homelands.
Individual accomplishments inspire others and reinforce group
pride, spinning a cycle of success forward. Education feeds essential
fuel into this momentum.
"Education was viewed as the key to the American dream," recalls attorney
Eugene Driker, a son of Jewish immigrants from Russia who met at a Detroit
night school English class. "I grew up in a household where it was simply in the
air that you would get an education. It wasn't made the subject of lectures or
formal discussions, it was just understood."
Chaldean families in Metro Detroit place an equally high premium on learn-
ing, as forerunners did when they began arriving from Iraq early last century
and in larger waves as wartime refugees during recent decades. "The
easiest thing to do with limited English is blue-collar work," says Fa-
ther Frank Kalabat of St. Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church in West
Bloomfield, noting that even well-educated professionals worked in
auto plants or stores at first. "What the parents went through, they
didn't want their children to endure. Kids who didn't want to go to
school, the father would say, 'I had no option, you do.'"

36%

Reform

28%

Conservative

18%

11%

Orthodox

3%

Humanist

3%

Reconstructionist

1%

Renewal

Reform
is now the
largest
branch of
Judaism.

M
co

Nearly
two-thirds
of Jewish
adults have
a college
degree.

SOURCE: 2005 DETROIT JEWISH POPULATION STUDY, JEWISH FEDERATION OF METROPOLITAN DETROIT