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Editorial

Facing Hurdles Will Secure Campus Hines Future

H

illel of Metro Detroit, a hidden
to 667 Student Center Building at Wayne.
jewel, engages more than 1,000
But HMD is giving its all to enrich Jewish
Jewish students every year, making
identity, nurture Jewish values, inspire Jewish
it integral to how we as a Jewish community
involvement, encourage Jewish journeys and
embrace our young adults and future lead-
build Jewish leadership.
ers. Bold visioning on top of its planning
achievements will give HMD the imaginative Driving Forces
timbers to stay relevant and vigorous — and
HMD strengths include engaging students
poised to succeed.
who are plugged into local Jewish life and
Along with the 10-campus Hillel Campus
most likely to remain in Metro Detroit fol-
Alliance of Michigan, which is under the
lowing graduation to build families and
aegis of Michigan State University Hillel,
careers. HMD also empowers, educates and
HMD has been a Michigan model for serv-
supports students on its campuses when
ing multiple campuses.
they face the poison of anti-Semitic and anti-
While it's based at Wayne State University
Israel arrows. HMD's professional leadership,
and boasts an inviting new lounge on
bolstered by the savvy of executive director
that Midtown Detroit campus, HMD also
Miriam Starkman, holds good relations
serves five other schools of higher educa-
with the top administrators at each of the
tion: Lawrence Tech in Southfield, Oakland
campuses served. The leadership is capable
University, Oakland Community
of providing those administra-
College, University of Detroit
tors with insight and guidance on
Mercy and University of Michigan-
most issues relating to Jewish life
Dearborn.
on campus — and with ways to
About a year ago, Wayne State
accommodate the needs of their
made the decision to renovate its
Jewish students.
Student Center Building, including
WSU President M. Roy Wilson
the Hillel lounge, which serves all six
certainly gets it. As he told a
HMD campuses. Nice as the lounge
gathering of HMD supporters at
M. Ro y Wilson
is, it's the expansiveness and vibrancy
the renovated lounge's dedica-
of programming and outreach that makes
tion on April 15 ("New Digs:' April 30, page
HMD and its multi-campus makeup work.
1): "We're so proud to host Hillel of Metro
It can't be easy offering programs from
Detroit's center right here on our campus.
HMD Central to six diverse campuses — and Wayne State made a commitment to promot-
drawing students from outlying campuses
ing and preserving Jewish life on campus by

making Gold 'n' Greens kosher and by hav-
ing a strong Judaic Studies program through
the leadership of Dr. Howard Lupovitch.
Renovating this center is just another com-
mitment we've made to do something that
is important to us to help preserve Jewish
culture here on campus."

Stepping Up
As an urban-based Hillel serving several
commuter campuses, HMD — successful as
it is— is not without challenge.
For starters, the current generation of
Jewish high school graduates is more able
and likely to go away to pursue a degree.
Local universities and colleges must engage
HMD for help in identifying and recruiting
Jewish students while also crafting messages
that resonate specifically with them. Wayne
State, for example, can promote the Irvin
D. Reid Honors College, U-M-Dearborn
can push the U-M degree and the potential
opportunity to conclude studies in Ann
Arbor; Lawrence Tech can leverage its Steve
Ballmer and the late Al Taubman ties; OCC
can play up the number of its Oakland
County Jewish students who earn college
credits while still in high school via the
Oakland Early College program.
By their nature, commuter schools have
students who often work while seeking their
degrees, take longer to receive their degrees
and don't have as much time to socialize and
join student activities. This model is funda-

As an urban-based
Hillel serving several
commuter campuses,
HMD — successful
as it is — is not
without challenge.

mentally different, and more hurdle laden,
than the paradigms in place at U-M in Ann
Arbor or MSU.
Less than 10 years ago, HMD was the
only game in our area focusing on the
18- to 25-year-old demographic. Now, with
Federation's NEXTGen Detroit, the Isaac
Agree Downtown Synagogue, Chabad in the
D, Moishe House and others, varied players
ply their wares here.
While HMD has stuck to its mission to
ably serve Jewish commuter students, the
other organizations have, by their wider
viewfinders, been able to reach many of
these same students. Those organizations
have put themselves in the driver's seat with

Facing Hurdles on page 113

Editorial

Religious Pluralism Is Integral To Israel

A

merican Jewry owes it to
non-haredi Israelis to keep
watch over Israel's new,
more-limiting governing coalition to
assure gains in religious expression
aren't summarily chipped away in
the name of Jewish tradition.
Israel is a melting pot of mostly
secular Jews and growing segments
of Progressive (Reform) and Masorti
(Conservative) Jews, although most of
the religious Jews, about 25 percent
of the Jewish population, identify with
a form of Orthodoxy.
This melting pot received a boost
with recent advances toward religious
pluralism – toward more religious tol-
erance because of legislative or judi-
cial acts, not as a result of acceptance
by the Orthodox-controlled Chief
Rabbinate.
Pluralistic issues abound, how-
ever, and are fair game for strict

112

May 21 • 2015

JN

limits under Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's new Likud-led, right-
leaning administration. Newly elected
Netanyahu was forced to cut a deal
with haredi parties in order to form a
government by the deadline.

At The Forefront

Included among Israel's more press-
ing issues, some of which have lin-
gered for years, are recognizing non-
Orthodox conversions, permitting civil
unions, barring gender-segregated
buses, helping immigrants navigate
bureaucracy, enforcing mandatory
haredi military service, quelling tur-
moil surrounding women's prayer at
the Western Wall, and bringing to jus-
tice racist rabbis who incite against
Israeli Arabs and detract from the
country's many inclusive clergy.
The agreement between conserva-
tive Likud and haredi United Torah

Judaism (UTJ) is likely to curtail the
growing number of Orthodox rabbis
eligible to perform conversions. It fur-
ther is likely to relieve haredi schools
of the obligation to teach secular
subjects, according to a JTA news
report. Also under the agreement, the
defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, alone
is authorized to decide whether to
enforce the law requiring haredim to
be part of Israel's military draft; he's
on record backing a less-obligatory
approach.
Shas, the Sephardic haredi party,
also is part of the new government.
Israel's last government had no
haredi parties. That enabled Yesh Atid
to win passage of several laws liberal-
izing the Israeli Jewish experience.
UTJ believes rolling back those law
will "strengthen Israel's definition as
a Jewish state." Lost in that notion
is Israel's diverse Jewish makeup and

the equality of burden inherent in mili-
tary service.

Shavuot Echoes

Haredi Israelis may herald the new
UTJ and Shas party agreements, but
pluralism advocates vow to mobilize
and lobby in search of grassroots
and legal support, including endorse-
ments by Jewish diaspora leaders and
U.S. Jewish groups. Within Israel's
Declaration of Independence are guar-
antees for freedom of religion and
"development of the country for the
benefit of all its inhabitants."
The two-day holiday of Shavuot, the
Feast of Weeks, which celebrates the
giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai,
begins at sundown Saturday, May 23.
Let Shavuot remind us of Judaism's
pluralistic nature – and let that espe-
cially play out in the ancestral Jewish
homeland.

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