8 | JUNE 10 • 2021 

PURELY COMMENTARY

guest column
A Letter to the Jewish Community
I 

hope this letter finds you 
safe and healthy as we 
emerge from the shadows 
of the COVID-19 pandemic to 
the promise of a brighter day.
Please know 
the Oakland 
County Sheriff’s 
Office and our 
local police 
agencies and 
public safety 
departments 
are working in 
concert to support your com-
munity and faith. Tensions 
remain high amid ongoing 
threats of violence across the 
country and internationally 

aimed at people of the Jewish 
faith. 
I am a member of the FBI’s 
Joint Terrorism Task Force 
(JTTF) and, since 2008, the 
Sheriff’s Office has assigned 
investigators to JTTF. We 
work with our federal partners 
to monitor potential threats 
and concerns. Additionally, 
we work closely with the U.S. 
Department of Justice Anti-
Hate Crime Unit to identify, 
track and address unlawful 
acts of hate. 
The Sheriff’s Office has 
maintained a zero-tolerance 
policy with respect to these 
acts and is committed to com-

bating hate crimes and hate 
incidents should they occur. 
While there are no current 
threats in Oakland County 
or the surrounding area, we 
remain vigilant and ready to 
respond immediately in the 
event issues of concern are 
presented to our agency. 
If you are not in an area 
patrolled by the Sheriff’s 
Office, I encourage you to 
work with your local police 
agencies and public safety 
departments to develop a 
plan and strategy to address 
any safety concerns. Such 
collaborations are important 
as they educate, build trust 

and increase the likelihood 
that community members will 
report acts of hate to their 
respective law enforcement 
agencies. If called upon, we 
stand ready to assist you and 
our partner agencies across 
Oakland County.
As your Sheriff, my mission 
is clear: to protect you. In that, 
I will never waiver. If there 
are ways in which the Sheriff’s 
Office can assist you, or if you 
have any concerns, please do 
not hesitate to call my office 
directly. 

Michael J. Bouchard, CHPP
, is the 
Oakland County Sheriff.

Sheriff 
Michael 
Bouchard

Boy, are teachers creative! To 
that extent, it was a good year!
I was blessed with the 
opportunity to interact with 
my students in person. I 
watched kindergarten students 
transition from young 5-year-
olds in September to be truly 
prepared to be first-grade stu-
dents in fall 2021. 
I watched my eighth-grade 
students, who started the 
year on Zoom, transition to 
in-person learning and, even 
greater, transition to being 
prepared to enter high school 
as brand-new freshman this 
fall. And I witnessed all the 
grades in between grow as 
resilient, strong students, who 
not only made up for academ-
ic progress last year, but who 
also learned to roll with the 
changes of CDC guidelines, 
school policies, temporary 
quarantines and all that this 

truly great year had to offer.
It was a good year.

YEAR OF ADAPTATIONS
Collectively, we witnessed 
Zoom bar and bat mitzvahs, 
that we were only recently 
able to reenact and celebrate 
in-person, in an adapted way, 
but safely enough that we were 
able to see our students read 
from the Torah at a school 
minyan after becoming a bar 
mitzvah a year ago, isolated in 
the safety of their home; now, 
together with peers, live, safely 
distanced at the bimah. 
I got to witness students 
who were truly isolated, fear-
ing for the health of them-
selves and their families finally 
get the green light from their 
doctors to return to in-per-
son learning, even if it wasn’t 
until May to finally physically 
reunite with their classmates. 

But it happened. And this year 
was a success. 
And while all of this was 
happening, the world around 
us continued to change and 
evolve and heal. And while 
this year was a success, it 
also carried with it the tides 
of a typical year, pandemic 
notwithstanding. There were 
illnesses, losses in families 
(pandemic-connected and 
otherwise, natural stages 
in life, etc.), terrible stories 
of things happening in the 
news in our beloved country 
Israel. We mourned with our 
students, we processed with 
our students, and we grew 
with our students. All of this 
contributed to it being a good 
year.
Regrets? All years are 
filled with regrets and, in 
that regard, this year was not 
unique. Should we have sent 

our children to school soon-
er? Did we contribute to our 
child’s anxiety? Did I ruin my 
child? The list of questions 
I have been asked can go on 
and on. 
The answers to these ques-
tions? As parents, we, too, 
were being challenged to do 
what we believed was best for 
our children ... So, we have 
permission to question our 
judgment, but it was a good 
year. To that extent, we cannot 
question the choices we made 
this year because without the 
choices we made, perhaps this 
year would not have been the 
same.
So, together we shall cele-
brate that we had the oppor-
tunity to have a good year. 
Cheers! 

Elana Miodownik is the K-8 school 
social worker at Farber Hebrew Day 
School-Yeshivat Akiva in Southfield. 

GOOD YEAR continued from page 4

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