|
|
Time after time
LENI REISS
Senior Contributing Editor
Readers took seriously a Jewish News assignment 10 years ago, as we celebrated four decades of serving the community, to answer the question, "What headline or story would you like to see in the paper a decade from now?" Responses, while revealing a consistent concern with the quality of life for all Jews, internationally, nationally and locally, in several instances were uncannily prescient.
Rabbi Gerald Kane, then director of Jewish Education at Temple Beth Israel, anticipated a "nationally recognized new building for the congregation at 40th Street and Shea Boulevard, with special emphasis on its educational facility." Kane erred only in the location of a splendid new building, now fully operational at 10460 N. 56th Street in Scottsdale.
Ed Rosen, who was health and physical education director for the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Phoenix, submitted this headline: "JCCs are center of Valley Jewish Life." With plans now under way for a new center in Northeast Phoenix and expansion of services at the Tri-City JCC, Rosen's dream is on the way to becoming a reality.
Readers Margo Roth and Ileen Herberg both played a numbers game. Roth predicted that Phoenix would have the largest Jewish population in the nation; Herberg thought it would be fifth. According to Fred Zeidman, director of planning and allocations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix, we now are among the 15 largest Jewish communities nationwide "and likely the fastest growing." The expectation is that in the year 2000, the number of Jews living in greater Phoenix will be double the 1980 population estimate of 44,000.
But Valley attorney David Bodney's hoped-for headline, "Netanyahu signs Mideast Peace Accord," entitles him to prognosticator of the decade honors. The accord is in place, and Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel's prime minister. Although the accord was signed before he took office, Netanyahu is dealing with its ramifications on a daily basis.
|
