points of view

>>

EDITORIAL BOARD:
Publisher: Arthur M. Horwitz
Chief Operating Officer: F. Kevin Browett
Contributing Editor: Robert Sklar

Send letters to: Ietters@thejewishnews.com

Contributing Editor

Editorial

Young Adults: Please Stay!

Internships give college students work experience
in hopes they choose Metro Detroit after graduation.

he idea is simple and
oh so practical: With
so many future civic
and Jewish leaders of Southeast
Michigan leaving the area for
career opportunities, why not
develop more local business and
professional internships that col-
lectively act as a springboard to
fruitful new careers here in Metro
Detroit.
Indeed, why not?
The Oakland County-based
College Student Internships (CSI)
program is putting form to that
idea. CSI is one of Jewish Detroit's
rising stars in showing under-
graduate students that local job
options may well exist. With our
aging demographics, building
a vibrant young Jewish base is
pivotal to sustaining our Jewish
community:
Seven volunteers conceived
CSI last December to help reverse
the trend of Jewish
young adult flight.
Each founder asked
a few friends to hire
interns for summer
2011. CSI scored by
placing 21 students
in internships in
Detroit, Ann Arbor,
Warren, Birmingham
and elsewhere in
Southeast Michigan.
Locales included doc-
tors' offices, law firms,
corporations and small businesses
even the Jewish News.
"We had 96 students and 44
businesses register on our web-
site said Amy Brody, 28, the
energetic, engaging program
coordinator at CSI. I met her Oct.
11 on the Hillel of Metro Detroit-
hosted Hidden Jewel Tour show-
casing Jewish life at Wayne State
University (WSU) in Detroit.
At the tour lunch, she spoke
passionately about helping con-
nect employers with prospective
interns by learning as much as she
can about potential participants to
make successful matches. She also
counsels students to help them
choose which internships would
best fit into their educational or
career goals.

—

42

November 24 • 2011

"Now that I'm back,
I hope to create
heightened awareness
and offer assistance
so that students
who want to stay in
Michigan feel they

can.

- Amy Brody

Eager To Assst
Brody and her husband, Stuart, live
in Birmingham. After graduating
from the University of Michigan
in 2005, she moved to New York
City, where she taught math in the
public schools. She returned to
Detroit in 2008 to attend the WSU
School of Law. She cur-
rently divides her work-
day between a law firm
and CSI. She grew up at
Temple Israel in West
Bloomfield, is a former
leader of the Jewish Law
Student Association
at WSU and currently
serves on the Oakland
County-based Tamarack
Camps alumni com-
mittee.
In a wide-ranging
interview, Brody told me: "One
of the greatest barriers prevent-
ing young adults from staying in
Michigan is the perceived lack of
job opportunities here. But that
perception isn't true anymore.
After college, I left Michigan for
that very reason. Now that I'm
back, I hope to create heightened
awareness and offer assistance so
that students who want to stay in
Michigan feel they can."
CSI is working on a few place-
ments for the fall and winter
terms, but is focused mainly on
next summer. "We look for busi-
nesses that need entry-level sup-
port, are interested in working
with college students and want
to provide learning experiences:'
Brody said. "We are very flexible in

terms of the types of businesses
and positions."
Applicants are required to
have finished at least one year of
college. In many cases, students
ask for specific types of intern-
ship experiences; CSI strives to
accommodate them. CSI specifi-
cally targets students with ties to
the Detroit Jewish community;
employers don't have to be Jewish.
While it works with campus
Hillels across the state to reach
students and is housed at the Max
M. Fisher Federation Building
in Bloomfield Township, CSI
is not affiliated with a specific
organization. Anonymous donors
who believe in the cause and in
strengthening Jewish Detroit fund
the $30,000 annual budget.

A Satisfying Match
Joel Mitter, 19, of West Bloomfield
interned this past summer at
Broder & Sachse Real Estate
Services in Birmingham. The
Bloomfield Hills Andover High
School graduate is a sophomore
in the Stephen M. Ross School
of Business at the University of
Michigan. He's active at the U-M
Hillel. The finance major is seek-
ing a bachelor of business admin-
istration degree.
"My career goals are to attain a
job in either investment banking
or sales and trading, and eventual-
ly complete a MBA program from
a high-profile graduate school;'
Mitter told the JN.
Rich Broder said his firm's sum-

Internships on page 43

Beit Kodesh Closing: A
Reminder To Scrutinize

•

e novi."ForSale7 synagogue building

on West Seven Mile in,Livonia

I

n the panorama of Detroit Jewry's smaller-profile
synagogues, Beit Kodesh commanded a noble place
for 53 years as an engaging, heimish congregation
embracing Conservative Jews in western Wayne County.
The Oct. 29 shutdown – with just 45 families and no cler-
gy – is melancholy certainly, but not a shock. Livonia and
nearby Northville and Plymouth are not growing areas for
the Jewish community.
The Livonia Jewish Congregation formed when 200
people gathered in 1958 to informally hold Shabbat ser-
vices when that Wayne County city was home to many
Jews before the Jewish rush to Southfield.
In its still-flourishing 1990s, the by-then renamed
congregation, translated to "House of Holiness," served
100 families with well-attended services, a sisterhood, a
men's club, a Sunday school, adult education classes and
a volunteer corps.
B'nai Moshe, a 350-family Conservative congregation
in West Bloomfield, will welcome many Beit Kodesh con-
gregants as new members in exchange for receiving the
closed synagogue's assets, including its Torahs.
What ultimately overran Beit Kodesh were ever-rising
operational costs as well as an aging membership with
few young families able to step into leadership roles.
Metro Detroit's declining Jewish population and the
state's tough economic conditions will continue to
spur some congregations to share resources, merge or
close. Between the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit's demographic studies in 1989 and 2005, local
Conservative movement affiliation dropped in half.
Synagogue contraction was inevitable.
Nationally, the Conservative movement is striving to
redefine and reinvent itself on the shifting spectrum of
organized Jewish life. Our larger local Conservative syna-
gogues are among the leaders in this emotional sea change.
Against this backdrop, isn't it better for the Jewish
community and its Conservative-affiliated congrega-
tions to be proactive in planning and anticipating trends,
infrastructure and needs – and to develop a model that
recognizes reality rather than taking each day at a time
until there are too few congregants to pay the mortgage,
electricity, heat and staff?
Beit Kodesh's survival for so long, and thriving for so
many years, wasn't so much a miracle as a remarkable
tribute to the spiritual heart and relentless drive of its
close-knit members.
The closing was a logical outcome to changing times.
That congregants will find a warm, new home as mem-
bers of B'nai Moshe is beshert – meant to be.
A different, but equally beshert scenerio occurred last
year when B'nai Israel, a Conservative congregation in
West Bloomfield, lost its building and was invited to share
the facilities of nearby Kol Ami, a Reform temple. II