oints of view

>> Send letters to: Ietters®thejewishnews.com

Editorial

Fixing The JCC Demands A Teamwork Approach

t's too early to gauge the success of a
determined alliance of supporters of
keeping the Jewish Community Center
of Metropolitan Detroit's Oak Park facil-
ity open in the wake of a spiraling budget
shortfall.
Overcoming an annual budget deficit of
$800,000 to $1 million won't be easy for
the JCC and its lead funder and adviser,
the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit. That kind of funding gap is daunt-
ing, to say the least.
But the arduous task that lies ahead
for the Committee to Save the Oak Park
Jewish Community Center shouldn't
diminish the noble cause and mission.
Closing the 60-year-old building would
make a serious dent in the JCC's overall
agency deficit, which has fallen to $2.6
million from $6.2 million as leadership
scrutiny has sharpened.
As the JCC Executive Board wrestles
with the pressing need to restructure its
governance to recalibrate a vision, reas-
sess priorities and balance the budget, it's
important to give credence to the work
of the grassroots Committee to Save the
Oak Park JCC. Its initial goal is to find
200 new members and raise $200,000 by
mid-March. Finding non-members will be
a lot easier than enticing 200 to join the

Oak Park JCC. Building underuse by bud-
get standards has been a big part of the
problem. In contrast, annual budget losses
at the larger, newer (and, as time has
shown, overbuilt) West Bloomfield JCC
— which houses Frankel Jewish Academy,
the Berman Center for the Performing
Arts, Jewish Ensemble Theatre and the
Inline Hockey Center — total $200,000 to
$400,000 a year.

Notable Interest
Still, when 725 show up for two com-
munity forums in the dead of winter to
demonstrate their support and ideas for
the Oak Park-based Jimmy Prentis Morris
Building of the JCC, and when upwards of
100 people turn out on Monday nights to
keep the Save the Oak Park JCC embers
burning, JCC and Federation must take
notice.
And they have so far. Their most com-
pelling statement was moving back the
targeted closing of the Oak Park JCC from
May 31 to at least Aug. 31, JCC Interim
Executive Director Jim Issner told the IN
("JCC Update Feb. 5, page 16).
The solution to the Oak Park JCC bud-
get dilemma lies somewhere along the
continuum of building closure to restruc-
tured operation — and establishing a toe-

It's important to give credence
to the work of the grassroots
Committee to Save the Oak Park JCC.

hold among Jewish Detroit's young adults,
many of whom are settling in neighbor-
hoods not far from the A. Alfred Taubman
Jewish Community Campus on 10 Mile,
east of Greenfield.
In a critical sense, the Oak Park JCC is
just a building. JCC services for surround-
ing residents don't necessarily require the
embrace of that facility's walls.
But when hundreds of Jews in a shrink-
ing but still engaged community say that
particular building matters in the scheme
of JCC capital assets, it's wise to let the
evaluation process play out through the
summer and encourage idea sharing. The
next idea could always be better.

Longer Reach
We're a caring, smart, resilient and some-
times daring Jewish community. Amid the
backdraft of emotions, challenges, brain-
storming, research, anger, calculating and

compromise, the right decision for what
to do with the JCC's Jimmy Prentis Morris
Building has the best chance of bubbling
up in a crucible nurtured certainly with
direction from JCC and Federation leaders,
but also by as much communitywide input
they can muster — even inspire.
What we are, and what we will be, as
a Jewish community stands as a pivotal
back-story to solving the JCC budget crisis.
Put simply, Federation wins not only by
continuing to seek community involve-
ment on JCC matters, but also by extend-
ing this approach to other central umbrella
agencies. For example, Jewish Senior Life
and Jewish Family Service could benefit
from a public forum covering a range of
key issues. JVS could learn how to better
serve the Jewish community's employment
needs.
Ultimately, there's no downside to being
more inclusive — more inviting. ❑

Guest Column

Debate Over Selma Creates Opportunity

W

hen the film Selma opened
on the weekend of the
Martin Luther King Jr. holi-
day, a passionate debate ensued center-
ing on reaction to the film's omission of
Jewish involvement in the Civil Rights
Movement as a central part of the story.
In particular, exception was taken to
the lack of reference to Rabbi Abraham
Joshua Heschel, who marched with Dr.
King in the third
march from Selma.
I Heschel's presence,
as well as his friend-
ship and affinity
with King, is well
documented, as
is the notable and
noticeable involve-
Rabbi Abraham
ment of Jewish col-
Joshua Heschel
lege students, evi-
dent in most other
attempts to represent the movement
during this period.
Dr. Susannah Heschel, who has writ-
ten extensively of her father's relation-

r

ship with Dr. King and their
shared values, in particular
the centrality to their think-
ing of the theme of liberation
in the Exodus story and the
call for justice by the Hebrew
prophets, told JTA.org , "My
father felt that the pro-
phetic tradition of Judaism
had come alive at Selma ...
What a pity that my father's
presence is not included in
Selma. More than a historical
error, the film erases one of
the central accomplishments of the Civil
Rights Movement, its inclusiveness, and
one of King's great joys: his close friend-
ship with my father."
Why the omission? Where did the
Jews go?
When studying Jewish involvement in
the Civil Rights Movement as a gradu-
ate student, I was instructed by Harvard
professors Rev. Dr. Preston Williams,
who marched with and was an adviser
to Dr. King, and Dr. Cornel West, per-

haps the most distinguished
academic progressive in the
African American community
for a generation (who wrote
with Rabbi Michael Lerner the
book Blacks and Jews, which
is concerned with the break-
down in black-Jewish rela-
tions since its heyday during
the Civil Rights era), that the
decline in Jewish involvement
in the movement is trace-
able to Stokely Carmichael's
ascendancy to the leadership
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee.
Carmichael embraced the Black Power
movement, effectively exiling Jews and
Caucasians. He changed his name to
Kwame Toure, became a supporter of
Louis Farrakhan and an unabashed anti-
Semite, referring to Jews repeatedly as
"those Zionist pigs."
Toure's frequent speaking engage-
ments at Michigan State, where I heard
him use the aforementioned phrase, is

a big part of the reason a handful of us
started the Jewish Student Union on
campus and became politically active.
(For a depiction of the story of Jewish
involvement in Civil Rights and the
impact of the change Toure brought,
the PBS series The Jewish Americans
does a fine job in the section titled
"Political Activism.")
Yet, whether chased out or written
out, justified or not, the perception by
not just the extremists, but also the
mainstream of the African American
community, is that since the heyday of
Civil Rights, Jewish concerns have been
much more parochial.
So the better question is not why
the omission of Jews from the story,
but why is Jewish involvement in the
American Civil Rights Movement an
important story to tell now? Is it even a
Jewish story to tell in 2015?
Heschel points us in the direction of
the Haggadah, which cites the directive
that in every generation we not only
need to tell the story of the Exodus, but

Selma on page 30

February 19 • 2015

29