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Single Parents Can Get
Scholarships For Early
Childhood Education
jewfro
Between Two Deaths
C
enturies of institutionalized rac-
ism contributed to the successive
shootings of Alton Sterling and
Philando Castile by white policemen. It
will take decades of work — work, not
just the passing of time — for all of us to
be judged by the content of our character,
rather than the color of our skin.
Still, I keep returning to the time
between the untimely deaths of these two
men. Something about those spaces, hin-
dered as they may be by hindsight — the
17 minutes between planes hitting the
Twin Towers, the 104
days between the deaths
of David Bowie and
Prince, the 16 months
from White Bronco to
Black Not Guilty —
crystalize like a pause
between seeing the
lightning and hearing
Ben Falik
the thunder.
Here are some of the things that hap-
pened in the hours between the deaths of
Alton Sterling and Philando Castile:
An unlikely group of young people
traveled through time together. Fourteen
teens from both coasts spending two
weeks in Detroit through the American
Jewish Society for Service (staying at the
old Temple Beth El building at Woodward
and Gladstone) joined Summer in the
City’s Junior Volunteers, the middle school
students from Northwest and Southwest
Detroit they had been serving alongside, at
the Charles H. Wright Museum of African
American History.
In pairs, they explored “And Still We
Rise: Our Journey Through African
American History and Culture” — start-
ing in the cradle of human civilization,
T
Teen volunteers tour the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.
traveling across the Atlantic, through
the Underground Railroad and Great
Migration to the elections of Coleman
Young and Barack Obama.
Tess Parr, who graduated from
Bloomfield Hills High School and moved
to Detroit to attend Wayne State this time
last year, prepped a mural for AJSS and
the JVs (her former Clark Park camp-
ers) to paint together the following day at
Hart Plaza, a historic destination on the
Underground Railroad and current home
to both festivals and homeless people.
Michiganders continued to set off all
variety of fireworks.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft steadied its
orbit around Jupiter. After traveling for
five years and nearly 2 billion miles, Juno
arrived — “looking for clues,” according
to the New York Times, “that might tell
how the planets came together in the early
history of the solar system.” At $1.1 billion,
the mission cost about as much as the new
Minneapolis Vikings Stadium, two-thirds
of which is being shouldered by Minnesota
taxpayers.
Thousands of auto manufacturing
employees and their families, including my
wife and kids, left town during the annual
shutdown and model-year changeover.
Judah and Phoebe went tubing, got ice
cream from Milk and Honey in Traverse
City and called to express their disappoint-
ment that I wasn’t driving back up for
another day.
Matthew Stafford was spotted at the
Bloomfield Township Costco. He was buy-
ing toilet paper.
Charles Felton got a bike so he could
ride from his home in Highland Park to a
community center in Hamtramck, where
he works to mentor young people through
a free summer enrichment program.
Two faith groups collided peacefully in
Hamtramck’s Veterans Park. Area Muslims
gathered for the Eid al-Fitr festival, mark-
ing the end of the holy month of Ramadan,
where the Negro League’s Detroit Stars
once played. Their celebration blended
with that of another group in ceremonial
garb — 4,500 fans of the Detroit City
Football Club there to see their team play
in newly renovated Keyworth Stadium.
Charles was there, as were many of his
campers from the neighborhood.
Dyrel Johnson — a black Detroiter, hus-
band and father, fresh off the Stagecrafters
production of Dreamgirls, who works to
empower young people in the city through
buildOn, a community service organiza-
tion — marked his birthday without cel-
ebrating it.
Families converged along the Detroit
River, their children running through the
fountains outside the Renaissance Center,
before the sun set behind the Ambassador
Bridge at 9:12 and the Riverwalk closed at
10 p.m.
*
letters
Nazi Germany’s
Pervasive Blind Eye
I read Contributing Editor Robert Sklar’s
June 30 essay “Hitler Abettors Must Feel
Justice” (page 6). It was very well done.
I had just finished preparing a lecture
titled “The Wannsee Conference and the
Final Solution,” which I have been asked
to give at the Adult Learning Institute
on Sept. 27 at Oakland University, when
I read Mr. Sklar describe “guards who
turned a blind eye toward genocide.” I
could not help but refer to my notes on
the Wannsee Conference.
There, 15 men in attendance, many of
whom were very highly educated (more
than half had doctorate degrees), turned
a blind eye toward the planned murder
of 11 million Jews in Europe.
If so many in the higher ranks of Nazi
Germany, including Hitler, Goering,
Himmler and the rest of the real bad
guys, including Heydrich, Goebbels and
Eichmann plus so many more (if not all)
in the civil service and so many, many
more — if they could turn a blind eye or
even feel satisfaction — what could we
have expected from the SS, including SS
guards at concentration camps and death
camps and SS Einsatzgruppen (special
mobile killing units) and collaborators,
all determined to liquidate Jews and
inexorably turn a blind eye?
Donald M. Borsand
Military historian
Southfield
Letters to the Editor: We prefer letters that relate
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Hwy., Suite 110, Southfield, MI 48034.)
he Jewish Federation of
Metropolitan Detroit’s Education
Department is offering a new
scholarship program for children of
single parents to receive early childhood
education. Made possible through a
$20,000 grant from the Jewish Women’s
Foundation, the program will fund 10
need-based scholarships of $2,000 to help
Jewish single parents defray the cost of
Jewish preschool.
Jewish early childhood education is
an essential community asset that is well
known to provide a lasting foundation for
Jewish identity. Unfortunately, however,
many programs are currently underuti-
lized. In fact, less than 30 percent of the
preschool-age children in the community
are enrolled in Jewish early childhood
education classes.
One of the major barriers to enrollment
is the high cost of such programs, which is
particularly burdensome for single parents
trying to raise children on one salary.
“We are thrilled to be able to offer
these scholarships,” says Dona Stillman,
Coordinator for Federation’s Single
Parent Alliance and Resource Connection
(SPARC). “Thanks to the vision of the
Jewish Women’s Foundation, we will help
ensure that children of single-parent
households are able to receive a meaning-
ful Jewish education during their forma-
tive years. We see this as a way of not
only enriching Jewish lives, but also of
strengthening the future of our commu-
nity, which depends upon the engagement
of our youth.”
Scholarship applications are available
online at www.jewishdetroit.org/
preschoolapp. All applications must be
submitted by Aug. 5 at 4 p.m.
Direct any questions regarding the
scholarships or the application process to
Dona Stillman at stillman@JFMD.org or
(248) 833-2527.
*
Contest Winner
MAZEL
TOV!
Kim Coleman
McColl-Teweles of
Farmington Hills
is this week’s win-
Kim Coleman
ner of a $100 gift
McColl-Teweles
certificate to Lelli’s
Inn on the Green.
Thank you to everyone who liked the
JN on Facebook. Check back soon for
another contest.
July 21 • 2016
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