Building Community

INSIGHT

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Collaboration,
Friendship?

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or the last
five months,
the "Building
Community" sections of
the Chaldean News and
the Detroit Jewish News
have jointly covered the
two communities.
This project was born
out of a desire for the
publishing teams of both
Southfield-based papers
to cover the common
history, distinctions, busi-
ness ties and collaborations between
the Jewish and Chaldean communities.
It was a great idea and has been a very
successful project.
But is it enough? Does it go far
enough to explore the true relation-
ships between our people? To be sure,
there are a multitude of sincere col-
laborations and areas of cooperation
between the communities. The leader-
ship of both groups has developed an
open dialogue and now has the infra-
structure in place to work together as
needed.
But there is still a lack of closeness,
true friendship and maybe even trust.
When I interviewed Rabbi Josh
Bennett from Temple Israel in West
Bloomfield in the inaugural issue of
this joint project (April 2010), I asked
him about this paradox. His response
was this: "Our communities are insular."
In other words, our communities are
inward. One of the definitions of "insu-
lar" is "pertaining to or constituting an
island:'
This is absolutely true in areas like
religion and marriage, but it seems to
go even further.
As an example, it recently dawned on
me that I have no close Jewish friends.
Now there are people who are Jewish
that I would call my friends and vice
versa. But we never see each other or do
anything together. At 44 years old, I've
been to one bar mitzvah and one Jewish
funeral and not a single wedding.
How is that possible for someone
who grew up in Southfield, which, in
the 1970s and '80s was the center of
Jewish life in Michigan and one of the
more important Jewish communities
in the entire country? How is that pos-
sible for someone who spent time a
great deal of time at diverse institutions
like Michigan State, the University of

Pennsylvania and Wayne
State Law School and who
has been active in this region
for 20 years?
Rabbi Bennett and I
discussed these issues and
agreed that we needed to
do more on this front. As a
start, he invited my family
and me to the Passover seder
at Temple Israel. We had a
great time — in spite of my
7-year-old's opposition to
the food — and were treated
like family. I'm embarrassed to say
that I have not seen him since, which
is my fault. We talked about going to
a Tigers game and having his family
at Shenandoah, but it has not yet hap-
pened.
The Chaldean News/Jewish News col-
laboration is also attempting to address
these challenges and plans upcoming
projects on topics including social
justice, economic development, culture
and education. These efforts are impor-
tant and great strides should be taken
to try to involve the two communities
at the grassroots level. To be success-
ful, this collaboration amongst the
leadership must get pushed down to
the social fabric of these two "insular"
peoples.
I was recently speaking to a friend of
mine who's a doctor in internal medi-
cine. He told me that that vast majority
of patients he sees with autoimmune
disease (i.e., Crohn's and colitis) are
Chaldean or Jewish. I told him this
makes no sense as Chaldeans hail from
Iraq and most of the Jews in this area
have roots in Europe.
"It makes perfect sense he said. "You
are both part of the same race. It's abso-
lutely genetic, and you have common
genes. I do not see it in non-Chaldean
Iraqis. Historically, you are the same
people."
Well, leave it to a couple of millen-
nia to screw things up. But here we are
today with some common traditions,
the same alphabet, a historic collabora-
tion between the two major community
papers and even the same diseases.
But are we truly friends? 17

Mike Sarafa is president of the Bank

of Michigan and a co-publisher of the
Chaldean News.