Ohio Jewish Chronicle, 1990-08-02

              ...*.,^..'l-">..- -
Serving Columbus and Central Ohio Jewish Community for Over 60 Years
VOL.68 NO. 31
AUGUST 2, 1990-AV 11. 5750
Devoted to Amrj
and Jewish Ideais
Ohio  Hist.Society  Libr
198;?.  Vtilnia '.five.
Columbus,    Ohio
A3SU C0MP
NEWS ANALYSIS
Brennan Defended Religious Freedom,
But Opposed Link With Government
Torah Academy Float Wins First Prize
"Proclaim, Liberty Throughout the Land" was the theme for Columbus Torah
Academy's award-winning float in the Bexley July 4 Parade. The float, which received
first place in the School Organization category, was designed and created by PTO
members Alex Rosen, Nancy Supowit, Phil Cohen, Anne Shulman, Marilyn Cole and
Susan Rosen. Rabbi Henoch Millen, headmaster of the school, and students, including.
the performing "Torah Twirlers," rode on the float. For the second year, Loeb Electric
donated the.use of their truck and provided a driver.
Comedienne Valery Pappas
To Headline 'Boys Night Out'
Valery Pappas, along with
Carl Wolfson and Howard
Busgang, will, headline the
14th annual "Boys Night Out
with the Stars" sponsored by
. the Agudas Achim Brotherhood on Wednesday, Sept. 12,
at 6:30 p.m.
Pappas is an actress, comedienne and impressionist. Her
acting talents have been featured on such shows as "The
Oldest Rookie" and "The
Tracy UUman Show," as well
as a series regular on NBC's
series, "The Cheech Show."
Her film credits include
"Ghostbusters II" and the
i female lead in the soon to be
released comedy feature,
"Smart Alex."
As an impressionist, < Pappas has also been showcased
on television shows, such as
Australia's number one rated
comedy, "Hey, Hey, It's
Saturday," and in America,
"Jimmy Walker and Friends"
(Showtime), "The Late
Show" (Fox Network) and
Richard Belzer's "Caught in
the Act" (HBO/Cinemax).
For the past five years,
Pappas has performed
throughout the United
States, having completed an
eight week tour of Australia,
Where she performed her
stand-up comedy to critical
acclaim. In addition, she enjoys regular status in such
venues   as   New   York's
Valery Pappas
"Catch A Rising Star," "The
Comedy Store" in Los
Angeles, and most recently,
the main showroom of The
Golden Nugget Hotel and
The Dunes Hotel in Las
Vegas and Harrah's Head-
liner room in Reno.
"In addition to the Comedy
CONTINUEDONPAGE5
By William Safire
NEW YORK (JTA) - Justice William Brennan, whose
remarkable tenure of nearly
34 years on the Supreme
Court ended with his announced retirement last
week, disagreed with those
who maintained that a judge
should interpret the law, not
make it.
In his view, to interpret is
in fact to create.
The 84-year-old jurist
found in the precise but
open-ended language of the
U.S. Constitution an opportunity for creative decisions.
He used the document as an
instrument to protect people's
. rights and balance them
where they conflicted, but
never to suppress them.
There were countless examples throughout his long
career. Three of his opinions
in recent years conveyed the
essence of Brennan's judicial philosophy and happened to be of serious concern to Jews.
Two the them involved the
display of religious symbols
on public property, which
Brennan saw as a violation
of the First Amendment's
prohibition against government establishment of religion.
The third concerned the
right of a U.S. Force officer
to wear a yarmulka while on
duty, a practice Brennan believed should be protected by
the- First Amendment's
guarantee of "free exercise"
of religion.
In recent years, as the Supreme Court grew more conservative, Brennan found
himself on the losing side in
these cases and others like
them.
He found himself in the minority when the Supreme
Court ruled 5-4, on March 5,
1984, tht the city of Pawtuck-
et, R.I., could put up a nativity scene as part of an officially sponsored Christmas
display without .violating the
Constitution.
The- court majority maintained that the city's creche,
surrounded as it was by replicas of reindeer, Santa
Claus and other seasonal
paraphernalia, was not an
overtly religious symbol.
Brennan argued that Paw-
tucket's maintenance and
display at public expense of
a symbol as distinctly sectarian as a creche "is plainly
contrary to the purposes and
values" of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause,
which mandates a separation of church and state.   ;'
He said-,it was ingenuous
"td pretend, as the court
does, that the otherwise secular setting Of Pawtucket's
nativity scene dilutes in
some fashion its singular
religiosity, V-    ;
Shortly .before Christnrias
1986, the Greater Pittsburgh
Chapter of the American
*. Civil Liberties Union sued to
. ban the display of an 18-foot-
high menorah owned by the
Chabad Hasidic movement
next to a 45-foot-high Christmas tree outside Pittsburgh's City Hall. ■•
The ACLU, supported by
several Jewish groups, also
objected to a creche in the
Pittsburgh courthouse.
Three years later, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that
the creche was unconstitutional. But at the same time,
it decided by a 6-3 majority
that posting a Chanukah menorah and Christmas tree
outside City Hall was constitutionally, permissible because they were part of a
seasonal display that "has
attained secular status in
our society."
Brennan agreed with the
majority that the creche
should be barred. But he also
felt the menorah should not
be allowed, arguing that to
define it as secular - and
therefore permissible - symbol was to devalue its religious significance.
In what has come to be
known as "the "yarmulka
case," the high court denied
Capt. Simcha Goldman, an
Orthodox Jew on duty with
the Air Force as a clinical
psychologist, the right to
wear a skullcap, which
would violate an Air Force
regulation forbidding the
wearing of headgear indoors.
In his dissenting opinion,
Brennan stressed that the
issue was one of free exercise of religion, a constitu-
* CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
Solidarity Rally Set .
For Sunday, Sept. 30
Under the auspices of the
Columbus Jewish Federation's 1991/Operation Exodus Campaign an Operation
Exodus Community Solidarity Rally is scheduled for
Sunday, Sept. 30, in the early
afternoon hours.
Details will be released in
the coming weeks, and Team
Exodus members encourage
the total community to reserve Sept. 30 for this gathering,
Ben Mandelkorn Retires As Executive Director Of Columbus Jewish Foundation
By Judith Franklin
Managing Editor
When Ben Mandelkorn
came to Columbus in'1956, he
thought it would be for two or
three years at most, and
then he would move on. He
couldn't have been more incorrect, and as it turns out,
his dedication to the Columbus Jewish community has
lasted for 34 years and shows
no signs of diminishing;
During the time Mandelkorn has been in Columbus,
his name has become synonymous with Jewish communal causes, especially the
Columbus Jewish Federation and Foundation. On July
23, he,was honored for his
lifelong .commitment and
dedication to both of these
organizations as well as to
the local and global Jewish
communities at the Foundation's Annual Meeting at the
Hyatt Regency Columbus.
Born Sept. 16, 1914, in
Paterson, N.J., to immigrant parents, Mandelkorn
learned early that dedication
to work was an important
value to live by. He recalls,
"We came from an Orthodox
traditional Jewish back- .
ground!" a closeknit family
that was relatively poor.
"We were a family that was
taken care of but struggling.
Although we owned our own
home, life was not easy..."
Mandelkorn's professional
experience in the field of social work began in January ^
1941 in Fayetteville, N.C.,
' where he was employed with
the Works Progress Administration as a district social1
worker. During his six-
month employment^Hh the
United States Government,
he finished writing his
masters thesis, prior to
graduation from the University of ^lorth Carolina Graduate School of Social Work.
He then spent two years
(1945-47) in Dallas as director of the Dallas Jewish Social Service Bureau. In 1947
he-accepted a position in the
Detroit Jewish Federation's
Department of Planning and
Budgeting.
Mandelkorn has been a
force in the Columbus Jewish community since 1956,,
when he arrived on the scene
to become director of the
former United Jewish Fund,
later to be known as the Columbus Jewish Federation..
He soon discovered, however, that he had a number
of other responsibilities, including  director  of  the
former Jewish Community
Council, Jewish Family Services and the newly formed
Columbus Jewish Welfare
Foundation.
"When I came to Colum-"
bus' there were myself, a
bookkeeper and a secretary'
at the United Jewish Fund,"
Mandelkorn said. "That's all
that was here in terms of
professional staff. There was
only one person on the staff
of Jewish Family Services
and there were no staff people at Jewish Community
Qpuncil, so I had to handle it.
At the Columbus Jewish Welfare Foundation', there were
no staff people, so I had to
handle that, too."
As Mandelkorn saw it, his
main job was to show the
Jewish community what
could be gained by putting
more  resources  into  the
various Jewish agencies. He
built up the annual campaign, brought more paid
professionals into the Feder-
Ben Mandelkorn
ation and Family Services
and generally went about the
business of strengthening
and  expanding  the  work
being done in the Jewish
community, .
At age 65, Mandelkorn retired as executive director of
the Columbus Jewish Federation and began a new
career as executive director
of the Columbus Jewish
Foundation. He began immediately to expand the
Foundation's structure,
which had been virtually
neglected over the past 25
years.
* "Once I was relieved of
my other responsibilities as
Federation director, I could
focus on how to organize better and to better market the
Foundation," Mandelkorn
explained. "The board was
strengthened, the by-laws
improved, many committees
were formed in order to
carry out different functions,
CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
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