DJN April 15, 2021

THE DETROIT

JEWISH NEWS

200 April 8-14, 2021 / 26 Nisan - 2 Iyar 5781

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Inner

Power!

Rabbi G.’s program brings power, peace and purpose to young Oak Parkers.

See page 14

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contents April 8-14, 2021 / 26 Nisan - 2 Iyar 5781 | VOLUME CLIX, ISSUE 10

36

18

PURELY COMMENTARY 4-12

Essays and viewpoints.

23 NOSH 28

OUR COMMUNITY 14

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20 21

Inner Power!

Rabbi G.’s program brings power, peace and purpose to young Oak Parkers.

A Cure within Reach

Student, 22, seeks funds for bone marrow transplant.

Flour Power!

Online baking class celebrates the mitzvah of challah.

22

Forging a New Path

23

End of a Chapter

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27

JVS Human Services’ Women to Work program changes lives.

Florine Mark sells her Weight Watchers franchise.

New Season without ‘Mr. Tiger’ Remembering my favorite baseball legends.

Turning a childhood treat into a thriving pot pie destination.

HEALTH 30

Archaeological Discoveries

Oakland U. study abroad team anxiously anticipating a return to Israel.

Comfort Food

Yoga Therapy Can Help!

It’s a gentle way to improve one’s health and sense of well-being.

MAZEL TOV! 32

Moments

SPIRIT 33

Torah portion

34

Synagogue Directory

BUSINESS 36

Mat Ishbia’s Hot Hand

37

From the Hill to the C-Suite

38

Here’s To

From a motivated basketball competitor to a mortgage industry giant.

Eric Feldman, Sen. Peters’ chief of staff, heads to Airbnb in new role.

ARTS & LIFE 40

Latke vs. Hamantash

Retired psychotherapist pens advice book as a “labor of love.”

41

Celebrity News

The ‘Inside’ Scoop

EVENTS

Life Lessons Shared

Veteran journalist and Oak Park native starts pandemic publication.

42

Film to explore debate on what is the more perfect Jewish food.

Community Calendar

ERETZ 44

Bridge Over International Waters

BBYO connects Ethiopian Israeli and American teens.

ETC.

The Exchange Obituaries Funding for Prior COVID Funerals

45 47

Raskin Looking Back

53 54

Reimbursement of $9,000 under U.S. program.

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Shabbat Lights

Shabbat starts: Friday, April 9, 7:50 p.m.

Shabbat ends: Saturday, April 10, 8:53 p.m. * Times according to Yeshiva Beth Yehudah calendar.

ON THE COVER: Cover photo/credit: Markus Campbell, age 8.

Photo by Arjo Photography. Photo courtesy of Kids Kicking Cancer.

Cover design: Michelle Sheridan

thejewishnews.com Follow Us on Social Media: Facebook @DetroitJewishNews Twitter @JewishNewsDet Instagram @detroitjewishnews APRIL 8 • 2021

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PURELY COMMENTARY for starters

Not-So-Smooth Sailing

“L

et my container ship go!” What are the chances that during Passover another act of freedom would be celebrated? In a brilliant public relations move last week, God paid homage to Passover by letting that giant ship go forth from Egypt. The grounded vessel sat idle for six days in the Suez Canal like a beached whale, holding up hundreds Alan of ships and billions of dolMuskovitz lars’ worth of commerce.

Contributing Writer Efforts by tugboats and dredgers removing tons of sand finally succeeded in releasing the boat from its resting place. Although a leaked memo from Egyptian authorities claimed a secret infusion of MiraLAX is what ultimately did the trick.

I know all too well how the ship’s captain felt because I was also involved in a dramatic boating incident in the early 1990s

on Lake Charlevoix. While vacationing, I decided it would be a good idea to rent a motorboat and take my young family on a cruise around the waterways.

Up until that point, my only sea faring experience had been passing the canoe nomenclature test at Camp Tanuga in 1963, enough, I thought, to man the helm of a boat.

I maneuvered through the blue waters without incident when I decided that time would allow for one port of call for a quick lunch. Our destination, a waterfront restaurant called Hard Dock Landing, a name that would be a harbinger of things to come.

I’m not a very good parallel parker on dry land, so I guess it must have been foolish pride that convinced me I could properly dock a boat.

As the dock for the restaurant edged closer, I began an internal nautical conversation. “Avast. All engines stop!” I muttered

Alan shows off his souvenir from his hard landing.

under my breath, preparing to let my vessel float its way gently to the dock. And float it did, until the bow of the boat hit the dock and got wedged and stuck under the restaurant’s “Dock Here” sign. Yes, I had, in my own inimitable way, come in for a “Hard Dock Landing.”

The spectacle of an arrival startled my continued on page 10

guest column

A Vision for a New Jewish Detroit

P

icture this: it’s a Friday night, and you’re getting dressed up to go to a friend’s house for Shabbat dinner. While you could drive, you’re in the Shabbat spirit, and you choose to walk the short distance over to your friend’s house.

You make Kiddush, eat a home-cooked meal, bench, play some board games and leave long after darkness has fallen to walk home.

Jeremy Rosenberg Sounds like a typical weekend in West Bloomfield, Oak Park or Huntington Woods, right?

Well, in this story, that’s not where you are; you just had a fantastic Shabbos dinner experience in Detroit.

In the months leading up to the pandemic, there was hardly a Friday night

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where I didn’t have a place to be for Shabbat dinner. When Hillel of Metro Detroit at Wayne State (HMD) or Chabad weren’t doing anything, my girlfriend (now fiancée) and I would use HMD’s Shabbatote program to host a dozen of our friends and classmates at our house in Woodbridge.

Of those dozen, which changed weekto-week, the majority would walk over, participate in the Shabbos aspects of dinner — not just the eating — and would stay after to veg without technology being an essential component. There were people who would end up spending Shabbat at the house — something my roommates and I were always happy to accommodate.

At the same time, I was working with a group of friends to get a regular Shabbatmorning service going. Per the custom of most of the group, we were looking for 10

guys to commit to at least one Saturday morning every month, simply to get a regular service going. In early March of 2020, we had eight guys and a few women who wanted to participate as well. We had anticipated starting right after spring break; spring break ended and the shelter-in began.

Of that group, there was a solid mix of young professionals living in the greater Downtown area, and a mix of graduate and undergraduate students at Wayne State.

Why bother telling you all of this? To say that there is demand for a real, religious Jewish community within Detroit’s city limits.

For myself, many of my friends and many more people who I don’t know, but am trying to locate through this essay, the options are a) figure out how to create continued on page 12

APRIL 8 • 2021

PURELY COMMENTARY guest column

3 Lessons to Strengthen Israel Education

N

ewsworthy stories unfold in Israel at breathtaking rates.

Repeated elections, COVID19 responses, pathbreaking Supreme Court decisions, the Abraham Accords — all are worthy of community Dr. Tal discussion and Grinfas-David age-appropriate student exploration. Yet few Jewish students and their parents possess sufficient understanding or discussion skills to explain them beyond a passing headline.

These rich topics relate to peoplehood, democracy, and the Land and State of Israel.

They affect our Jewish identity and Israel’s role in it. We all could use a booster shot

in our knowledge foundation.

We realize that knowing core information, let alone the associated nuances, requires time, specifically educational foundations that can’t be packed into a few hours a week of Judaic studies in a post-b’nai mitzvah class or in 11th or 12th grade.

Four years working closely with a dozen schools across North America have shown me the wonderful benefits and experiences from comprehensive and integrated approaches to Israel education for students, parents and the community at large.

The positive results from the Center for Israel Education’s Day School Initiative are replicable. These are three of the most important lessons learned.

START EARLY AND OFTEN We do not teach calculus in kindergarten, nor do we avoid grade-level benchmarks for fear that students will hate math. We also do not let each educator decide how and when to teach elements of math. Instead, we use a well-defined curriculum to help children acquire difficult foundational concepts and skills bit by bit, year by year.

Similarly, we shouldn’t expect 11th-graders to grapple with Israeli-Palestinian relations, Israel’s parliamentary democracy, its management of a pandemic or the debate over religion in Israel’s Jewish identity without a foundation of age-appropriate Israel education. We need to educate from the earliest grades upward. By developing a knowledge base,

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APRIL 8 • 2021

a connection and a habit of informed conversation from an early age, we make possible the later discussions that we desire and for which students hunger.

An example is Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, Pa., which is building depth and sophistication into Israel education for its sixth- to 12th-graders. A three-part series for 10th-graders, for example, builds on earlier lessons to address Jewish diversity and the compromises involved in maintaining peoplehood. Such learning leads to questions about the diaspora origins of Israeli democracy and how Israeli and American Jews influence each other. continued on page 10

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APRIL 8 • 2021

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PURELY COMMENTARY analysis

W

hen the first exit polls were published, it seemed as if the long stalemate had been ended. Within a couple of hours, however, the polls had been revised, and by the end of a long night and morning Jonathan S. of counting, it Tobin JNS.org turned out that the deadlock between those who wish to keep Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister and those who want to get rid of him hadn’t been broken.

With all the ballots tallied, Netanyahu won the majority of the vote but doesn’t have a clear path to a 61-seat majority needed to form a coalition.

This fourth consecutive election stalemate in two years is a discouraging outcome for the Jewish state. It’s not just an annoying waste of time. More than that, it has been estimated that the cost of holding these four votes amounted to $4.24 billion — a staggering sum for a small country that, like the rest of the world, is dealing with the economic catastrophe caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Aside from the not-inconsiderable expenses involved in staging the contest, election days are legal holidays in Israel. That costs company holiday pay, as well as a loss of productivity and sales, even though some businesses, like restaurants, benefit from people having the day off.

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Then there is the plain fact that the lack of a national budget for 2020 — let alone 2021 — is also a blow to stability and the country’s economic well-being.

There is a national consensus that the standoff has been something of a disgrace since, among other things, the frequency of elections means that Israel has now surpassed Italy as the home of the most unstable democracy in the world. And yet, the one person who hasn’t been hurt by it is Netanyahu. The failure to form a stable government has served him fairly well since it enables him to govern without actually winning an election.

Even the lack of a budget has made it easier for him since he hasn’t been hampered by the financial negotiations that would have undermined his agenda.

Indeed, in the course of the last year, Netanyahu hasn’t just managed to stay afloat.

Since Israel was last forced to the polls, the prime minister had what historians may ultimately say were his two greatest accomplishments: the signing of the Abraham Accords and the successful effort to get Israelis vaccinated against COVID-19, enabling it to be the first of nations to essentially emerge from the yearlong pandemic crisis.

Any leader with two such impressive achievements to his credit might have expected to be easily re-elected. But the election results speak volumes about both his strengths and

PHOTO BY OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90.

Israel Still Can’t Make Up its Mind About Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses supporters on election night at Likud Party headquarters in Jerusalem, March 23, 2021.

his weaknesses. That’s because it could also be said that no prime minister who was facing trial for three corruption charges and who had worn out his welcome with both the public and political colleagues after 12 consecutive years in office could reasonably presume to emerge from an election as the head of the largest party and as the only person with a chance to form a government, as is also the case with Netanyahu.

His able statesmanship and skillful governance — not to mention a national consensus behind his core positions on issues that used to divide Israel over policy toward the Palestinians, territory and settlements — have made him something of an institution.

It’s no wonder that polls show that most Israelis (including many who don’t vote for him) think that he’s the most qualified person to hold the top job.

Still, his constant scheming, untrustworthiness in political negotiations and the sense of entitlement that go with having stayed in office so long with no thought of grooming a successor, let alone stepping aside for the next generation, has also fueled rage at Netanyahu on the part of a broad cross-section of the Israeli public. It may be created by a mix of partisanship and ideology (many in the “anybody but Bibi” camp would be similarly determined to oppose any Likud leader or non-leftist), but it is nonetheless real. His followers cannot imagine Israel being led by anyone else. And yet the fact that so many Israelis seem focused on nothing but the quest to topple him has further embittered the country’s political discourse.

Can Netanyahu find a way out of the corner into which the Israeli public has painted itself? continued on page 12

APRIL 8 • 2021

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APRIL 8 • 2021

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PURELY COMMENTARY NOT-SO-SMOOTH continued from page 4

3 LESSONS continued from page 6

“SUBSTANTIVE ISRAEL CONVERSATIONS WITH STUDENTS EMPOWER THEM TO CONNECT AND STAY CONNECTED WITH ISRAEL” — DR. TAL GRINFAS-DAVID

INTEGRATE ISRAEL THROUGHOUT THE CURRICULUM As the National Council of Teachers of English noted in 1995, the world is not organized into distinct subject areas, and a curriculum should reflect that complexity. If schools are serious about mission statements citing Israel education as central to Jewish identity, they should treat Israel education as equal to other subjects and incorporate it into everyday general studies. Israel can’t be an afterthought granted a sliver of the time set aside for Judaic studies, with some extra time allotted weeks before a trip to Israel.

When Israel is integrated into science, math, English and social studies, the subject belongs to the entire faculty, and educational silos are toppled. Educator collaboration increases, which improves staff morale and the school climate.

Students perceive Israel as a subject that matters and gain the proven benefits of interdisciplinary instruction, including critical thinking, problem solving and an appreciation for uncertainty.

Vancouver Talmud Torah in British Columbia has created an integrated curriculum called I-S.T.E.A.M. (Israel through Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math).

In one study unit, students explored Israeli architecture and watched videos of such designers as Eliezer Armon and Yaakov

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APRIL 8 • 2021

Agam. They took virtual tours of Israel to learn what makes spaces holy and how to bring that special feeling to places in their lives.

They combined those inspirations with engineering lessons about form and function and computer skills in design software to create a plan for a new school wing, then wrote essays to persuade administrators to accept their design.

INVOLVE THE COMMUNITY Far from sparking controversy, well-integrated Israel education based on original sources generates critical thinking. Biases and polemics cannot take root when sources are used and interpreted.

Bringing communal influencers into the process builds trust and helps deepen the community’s Israel discourse.

Parents become key supporters when their excited children bring home new knowledge and when schools invite them to participate while anecdotal, evidence suggests that these schools retain students and boost enrollment.

Sinai Akiba Academy in Los Angeles has recognized the crucial part parents can play in middle school. While writing lessons and experimenting with activities for students, the administration and teachers are also designing opportunities for parents to learn. The programs will showcase informed discourse and build bridges among families with diverse opinions.

We have learned that insti-

tuting excellent Israel education requires a multiyear commitment. I meet with some teachers weekly to review lesson plans, demonstrate presentations to students, and help them wring out biases and assumptions for or against Israel and commit to primary sources over preferred narratives.

THE PAYOFF IS IMMENSE. In the short term, teachers find their work more rewarding. Students are excited and engaged. Parents learn and become more committed to the school community.

In the long term, deep knowledge of Israel’s history, politics, economy and culture, rather than idealized portrayals that can be shattered, leads to understanding of why Israel matters to diaspora Jews and can make Israel a community unifier instead of a divider.

That unity goes beyond Israel. While examining debates ranging from the Zionist Uganda Plan to the sinking of the Altalena to contemporary politics, schools are modeling listening, speaking and disagreeing according to Jewish values. Just as in every generation the Jewish people have struggled with the dreams and realities of Israel, so too we have managed to embrace the strengths and weaknesses of our differences, then compromise and come together.

When we have those substantive Israel conversations with our students, we empower them to connect and stay connected with Israel and to be agents of change and continuity in our Jewish communities.

Dr. Tal Grinfas-David is the day school education specialist for the Center for Israel Education, an Atlanta-based nonprofit.

family, but of course, I could not allow panic to reign on the bridge of my ship — not on my watch!

I got myself into this mess and I was going to seamlessly get myself out of it.

“Full engines reverse!” I yelled in my inner sailor’s voice as I proceeded to shift gears in an attempt to dislodge the boat from the large wooden restaurant sign holding us captive. The boat slowly struggled to move away from the dock, like a fish trying to free itself from the grasp of a hook.

FINALLY, FREEDOM I could feel progress being made.

Actually, I could “hear” progress being made because emanating from the wooden sign was an ear-piercing, gut-wrenching sound of nails being violently ripped from their lodging to the dock. I freed my boat but was taking the restaurant’s sign with me!

A lesser man would’ve fled the scene but not me. I was hungry and I was willing to swallow my pride (the incident was witnessed by restaurant patrons on a patio) in order to swallow some lunch.

I walked up to the maître d’ an offered the traditional Jewish boater’s greeting — “Oyhoy, matey!”

Fortunately, I wasn’t confined to the brig or asked to cover repair costs for this accident at sea. As a good will gesture, I tipped our server handsomely and bought a Hard Dock Landing T-shirt for the memory.

I fully admit the dock-crashing fiasco that fateful day lay solely on operator error. I could’ve blamed it on rough waters, but alas, the sea was not angry that day… only the manager of the restaurant.

Alan Muskovitz is a writer, voice-over/ acting talent, speaker, and emcee. Visit his website at laughwithbigal.com,“Like” Al on Facebook and reach him at amuskovitz@ renmedia.us.

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APRIL 8 • 2021

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PURELY COMMENTARY NETANYAHU continued from page 8

Talk of defectors from other parties is, as was the case last year, mooted by his supporters, but that seems even less likely this time around. Another possibility of a solution is both a laudable development as well as a potential case of staggering hypocrisy.

When the four disparate Arab factions ran together as a single party last year, they won 15 seats as the Joint Arab List.

When Blue and White leader Benny Gantz spoke of his willingness to deal with that coalition of anti-Zionists — many of whom sympathize with terrorists — the Likud and others blasted the idea as something that would compromise the nation’s security.

The Joint List split when Mansour Abbas, leader of the Ra’am Party that advocates the conversion of Israel into an Islamist Palestinian state, pointed out something that was quite true. Israeli Arabs have been badly served by their

“THIS FOURTH CONSECUTIVE ELECTION STALEMATE IN TWO YEARS IS A DISCOURAGING OUTCOME FOR THE JEWISH STATE.”

politicians. Many of them are corrupt and have spent their time working harder to support Palestinian efforts to undermine Israel than on trying to assist their constituents. Abbas (no relation to the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas) suggested that it was time for them to stop grandstanding in order to help allies in Ramallah and Gaza, and start doing deals with the Zionist parties in order to serve their people better.

As he promised during the campaign, however, Abbas says that he is open to supporting either side of the Israeli political divide in order to advance the interests of Israeli Arabs.

That opens up the possibility that one of the non-Jewish parties would become part of a government, even if it meant supporting it from outside the coalition.

If Ra’am enables Netanyahu and the Likud to govern in this fashion, the prime minister and

his supporters would be open to charges of staggering hypocrisy. Then again, it would also give the lie to the canard that Israel is an “apartheid state.”

It would also illustrate just how far the Abraham Accords and the other normalization deals between Israel, and Arab and Muslim states, have helped erode support for the century-long war on Zionism.

Friendly relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are a signal to Arab voters that it’s in their interests to stop acting like auxiliaries of Palestinian terror groups.

This scenario may not happen — not the least because many of Netanyahu’s supporters won’t tolerate sitting in a government whose existence

depends on the votes of those who don’t really want it to exist. It also doesn’t alter the fact that half of the country will never rest until he is finally defeated. Nor does it erase the way the prime minister’s sense of indispensability and double-dealing has fatally divided an Israeli right that might otherwise be firmly in control under almost any other leader.

The mere fact that the option of a deal with an Arab party can be realistically discussed is also a tribute to how much Netanyahu has changed Israel and the Middle East.

members of a Jewish community; hopefully, this demonstrates that that’s not true.

Today, there are multiple organizations that exist in Detroit that are constantly enriching Jewish life: Chabad of Greater Downtown Detroit, Hillel of Metro Detroit and the Downtown Synagogue.

While each of these entities provide wonderful Jewish programming, that’s often where it ends: programming. The Downtown Synagogue is a wonderful place, and I’ve spent dozens of Shabbat mornings there, but in all my pre-pandemic discussions, the intent was to create a community

that fell somewhere along the lines of Modern Orthodox or Orthodox.

As Detroit continues to attract new businesses, new developments and new investments, we’re continuing to lose scores of young Jewish professionals to urban areas with large Jewish communities, like New York, Toronto, Chicago, LA and Miami, to name just a few. There’s really no reason why Detroit can’t compete with these cities.

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve grown my network to include other Jewish professionals in Detroit, including a number of people in the

real estate development world who share the same interest in the creation and growth of a Jewish community in Detroit.

Prior to writing this article, the idea was that a Field of Dreams approach might work: “If you build it, they will come.” As it turns out, there are companies and individuals who would work hard to build it when that demand presents itself — I’m hoping to find through this article who will come.

— JONATHAN S. TOBIN

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate.

Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

A VISION continued from page 4

and live a Jewish life in Detroit or b) move to an urban area that already has such infrastructure.

THE GOAL The goal isn’t to mess around in the city and then get serious in Huntington Woods or West Bloomfield; many of us don’t see our futures in any suburbs, anywhere. The goal is to build a thriving Jewish community with a shul, school, access to kosher shopping and kosher dining, and more, in Detroit.

Many people still seem to think that the only Jewish people living in Detroit are hipsters or have no interest in being

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APRIL 8 • 2021

Jeremy Rosenberg lives in Detroit, working in transit and real estate development. He invites people to reach out to him at jeremy_324@ hotmail.com.

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OUR COMMUNITY ON THE COVER

Inner

Power!

Rabbi Goldberg’s program brings power, peace and purpose to young Oak Parkers.

BRYAN GOTTLIEB CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

merciful endeavor begun two decades ago by a Southfield rabbi to bring relief to young cancer patients has enlarged to offer encouragement and support to physically healthy, but underprivileged schoolkids in Oak Park.

It’s been five years since 10-year-old cancer survivor Leah Vincenzetti became involved with Kids Kicking Cancer, the organization founded by Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg in 1999 that teaches self-control and deep breathing techniques found in the martial arts to help ameliorate ailing children’s pain.

Leah’s journey typifies the nearly 12,000 youngsters who have become both warriors in (and ambassadors of) the organization over the course of its existence. Empowered with an inner strength learned through KKC’s programs, along with Goldberg’s mantra of “Power, Peace, Purpose,” the fourth-grader speaks easily about how KKC has given her the tools to assuage the fear and pain that cancer creates.

“I’ve been able to teach people power breathing so it can help them whenever they need to calm down,” Leah explains during a Zoom conversation we had after school one day. “Or if you go to the hospital and you get nervous, it’s easier when you just breathe through it.”

Breathing through it for Leah calls upon another tool in the KKC program: the refrain of “Breathing in the light and blowing out the darkness.” The simplicity of the message and related programming built around its ethos has resonance. The organization has grown from a local Detroit outfit to a worldwide nonprofit, with chapters in nine states

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and six countries across three continents.

The palliative care protocol that KKC offers its clients — including those with non-cancer diseases through its Heroes Circle division — are rooted in the concept of somatic breathing: a sophisticated form of conscious breathing that teaches how to deliver more oxygen to the brain and body.

The science behind deep breathing is awash with studies demonstrating empirical efficacy in reducing anxiety, pain and the effects of trauma. Western medicine has been playing catch-up to what many practitioners of the martial arts, like Goldberg, have known for thousands of years: The mind can play tricks, and each person has the ability to control their mind.

And because conscious breathing is both an effective and low-cost way people of all ages can reduce the body’s level of cortisol — the hormone released to curb functions that would be nonessential in a fight-or-flight situation — breathing techniques abound.

Goldberg packaged his teaching in a way that uniquely appeals to children: through the guise of learning martial arts.

HEROES CIRCLE IN OAK PARK KKC and its Heroes Circle’s successful track record helping pediatric patients led to a series of meetings that began in August 2017 between its founder and the then-superintendent of Oak Park Schools, Dr. Daveda Colbert. The discussions included exploring ways programming like KKC’s could be adapted to help students struggling with the myriad psycho-social problems that often plague low-income students of color.

Rabbi Elimelech Goldberg, known to the kids as Rabbi G., founded Kids Kicking Cancer in 1999. He and his wife lost their first child, a daughter, to leukemia in 1981 at age 2.

“We realized we had a tool that could accomplish great things for a great many people, children in particular” Goldberg explains. “It could lower the stress and suffering of children facing trauma that may not be medical in nature, but more cultural and socio-economic challenges; those challenges disproportionately fall on children of color.

“And the more we were learning about childhood trauma, in general, and how adverse childhood experiences negatively impact the immunological system, we're seeing that those children are then becoming our patients because stress severely impacts the immune system — so many parts of the human body — in a negative way.”

Colbert and Goldberg approached the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation to vet the idea of creating a curriculum adhering to the state of Michigan’s educational guidelines while also teaching students how to self-regulate, increase their attentiveness and decrease their anxiety.

Like its progenitor, the curriculum would be a Trojan Horse of learning: Martial arts therapists would come to the school for in-person lessons, augmenting the curriculum teachers would be provided.

Larry Wolfe, president of the Kahn Foundation, was convinced and gave the green light to fund a pilot program that would track the children’s progress with the help of scientists at Wayne State University continued on page 16

APRIL 8 • 2021

Keith Vartanian, a martial arts therapist with Kids Kicking Cancer’s Boston and New York chapters, takes us step-by-step on how to perform a Breath Brake, a core component of the Childhood Resilience Initiative curriculum.

Vartanian hosts a weekly Facebook Live broadcast at 5 p.m. (EDT) every Wednesday on KKC’s Facebook page (facebook.com/kidskickingcancer).

He performs what is known as a “body scan,” releasing tension, discomfort and pain; letting the power of your breath “bring healing and comfort,” as he described. Vartanian performs Breath Brakes, virtually, with participants, helping them “breathe in the light and blow out the darkness.”

— Bryan Gottlieb

1. In our Breath Brake, we set our feet shoulder width apart. We start off by rubbing our hands together, feeling the warm energy we can create — our “chi.”

3. We “breathe in the light” for three seconds as we raise our hands up — through our belly, chest, and neck — and the breath follows and fills those spaces. At the top, we take one last breath in to fill our lungs and hold onto those happy thoughts for another three seconds.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KEITH VARTANIAN AND THE HEROES CIRCLE

What is a ‘Breath Brake?’

2. We then relax our shoulders, laying our hands at our waist, palms up. We begin to think about our “light,” all the things that make us feel happy, strong, safe and loved.

4. We then turn our hands to face downward, pushing our palms slowly to the ground over a final three seconds, “Blowing out the darkness” — those things that make us feel pain, discomfort, anger, sadness and fear.

5. At the very bottom, when we think we have no more air, we push out the last bit our breathe while placing our hands as far down as they will go. Then start the process again, for as many times as needed, to feel the light inhabit one’s bodies. Continue the thought process of breathing in the good things in our life and blowing out the darkness.

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OUR COMMUNITY ON THE COVER

Students at Pepper Elementary School were first introduced to the Childhood Resilience Initiative program during the 2018-19 school year. The move to remote learning tested the CRI program, resulting in a more dynamic way to teach the content. continued from page 14

Hon. Bridget Mary McCormack chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and co-chair of the Childhood Resilience Initiative

Dr. Jamii Hitchcock, superintendent of Oak Park Schools

Robert Bronstein, chairman of the board, Kids Kicking Cancer

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School of Medicine. The program launched during the 2018-19 school year at Pepper Elementary School, and included both its second-, third- and fourthgrade classes. In order to prove its effectiveness, Pepper was randomly selected and another primary school in the district, Einstein Elementary School, served as a control group.

Goldberg and KKC assembled an A-list roster of professionals across multiple disciplines to help establish and create the Childhood Resilience Initiative within the organization’s Heroes Circle division. The CRI has some powerful names behind it, including its co-chair, the Hon. Bridget Mary McCormack, the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court.

“The simplicity and scalability of the program was what made me want to do anything I could to support it,” McCormack said in an email. “We see so many people struggling with trauma in our courts, and rarely do I come across resources that can have such tremendous reach.”

REACHING MORE KIDS “In our first pilot year, we were in six classrooms, but now we are in the process of expanding the curriculum to accommodate the grades above and below,” said Jamila Carrington Smith, KKC’s chief innovation officer and a co-author of the CRI curriculum. “We now have fifth-graders in this program and, so, we need to be ready to catch them when they move into middle school. It’s a particularly vulnerable space, emotionally, for kids.”

Year 2 of the grant funding brought a new school superintendent to Oak Park with the hiring of Dr. Jamii Hitchcock, previously a member of the Birmingham Public Schools leadership team. At their first meeting, Goldberg recalled, Hitchcock upped the ante for the program by asked him, “Why the program isn’t in every one of my schools?” It has since

expanded to all of Oak Park’s elementary students in grades 3-5.

“Because this program was successful at Pepper, and because one of the KKC staff members is a retired Oak Park teacher, it lent some credibility to the program,” Hitchcock said, referring to curriculum co-author, and KKC team member, Kelly Blankenship, a 30-year veteran teacher at Pepper school. “People saw merit to what was happening at Pepper and understood that it was successful … and could be successful at Einstein and Key.” Cindy Young, a third-grade teacher at Pepper, said the initial reaction to CRI by some of her colleagues was skeptical, but Blankenship lent significant credibility to the lesson plans.

“So, you’re always going to get people who are like, ‘I don't want another thing to teach,’ or people who don't like change,” Young explained. “But the fact that Kelly Blankenship was behind creating the curriculum, it went a long way in convincing people how great the program is.”

Blankenship retired from teaching at Pepper after the conclusion of CRI’s pilot year and was so impressed with the improvement in student performance she witnessed, she approached KKC to offer her services.

“I was retiring, and we went out to lunch with the folks from Kids Kicking Cancer, and I reached out to let Jamila know that if I could help out, I was available,” Blankenship said. “The following fall, I started writing the lesson plans, which were written for teachers by a teacher, who get time constraint, but also the need to be embedded in a cumulative curriculum.”

Blankenship was critical in creating both a workbook and accompanying teacher’s manual, and ensuring lessons hued to state of Michigan educational guidelines. The 26-week, daily 15-minute lessons on teaching children self-awareness of their emotions, continued on page 17

APRIL 8 • 2021

$30 Million Gift to U-M Depression Center to be renamed for Eisenberg family.

T

he University of Michigan Board of Regents has approved the renaming of the U-M Depression Center for Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg and their family, in recognition of their transformational $30 million total giving to depression research and scholarship.

The center will be known as the Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg and Family Depression Center.

The Eisenbergs’ philanthropy toward the center includes earlier support for advanced science in the field of mood disorders and a professorship now held by

U-M

JN STAFF

Kenneth and Frances Eisenberg

the center’s new director, Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D. “Thanks to the Eisenbergs’ extraordinary commitment to moving depression and bipolar illnesses out of the shadows and into the sunlight of advanced scientific research, discovery and evidence-based care, our university will be able to accelerate the pace of prevention, detection, treatment and support,” said

U-M President Mark S. Schlissel, M.D., Ph.D. “It’s hard for me to imagine a more important and timely investment in medical research than what is being made by the Eisenberg family.”

Kenneth Eisenberg said, “With the pandemic, we are finally talking about how central mental health is to our everyday lives. There is a growing awareness about how pervasive conditions like depression are across the nation. There’s promise in that awareness.

“Frances and I wanted to provide a gift that would exponentially grow the potential to change millions of people’s lives for the better, as well as provide momentum to the incredible work that the Depression Center is doing in this area,” he added.

“It’s a message of hope and promise of better lives for millions.”

The Eisenbergs’ total giving to U-M is $39 million, including

gifts to the Taubman Medical Research Institute and other areas of Michigan Medicine, to the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies in the College of Literature, Science & the Arts (LSA), and contributions to the School of Education and TeachingWorks, School of Social Work, Department of Athletics and University Musical Society.

“Depression and related disorders affect the health and well-being of so many people, and the outcomes of many other illnesses,” said Marschall Runge, M.D., Ph.D., the executive vice president for medical affairs, dean of the Medical School and CEO of Michigan Medicine, U-M’s academic medical center.

Runge said, “We are confident that the Eisenbergs’ leadership will inspire others who have seen the toll that depression can take to lend their support and move science and clinical care forward even faster.”

KKC from page 16

stress triggers and how to positively deal with them, was put through a significant stress-test as districts nationwide were shuttering in March 2020.

“With regard to COVID-19, if you're looking for a silver lining, one of the things that made the transition a little smoother was having to flip a switch and learn how to educate kids in a different way overnight, especially kids with so many of the challenges our kids experience regularly,” Hitchcock said.

Once COVID shut in-person learning down, the CRI team went to work on truncating the lessons from five to three 15-minute weekly sessions, and the martial art instructors held remote office hours, versus weekly in-person sessions, to maintain contact with students.

Blankenship brought her former colleague, Cindy Young, onto the team in order to streamline

“THE SIMPLICITY AND SCALABILITY OF THE PROGRAM WAS WHAT MADE ME WANT TO DO ANYTHING I COULD TO SUPPORT IT.” — HON. BRIDGET MARY MCCORMACK, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE MICHIGAN SUPREME COURT AND CO-CHAIR OF THE CHILDHOOD RESILIENCE INITIATIVE

the lesson plans for remote learning.

ADDED VALUE “One of the roles I had in Birmingham was the director of character education, and the Heroes Circle really reminded me of that,” Hitchcock said.

When students help others with the techniques they have learned, she said, “in many cases, the students that were doing the helping actually ended up helping themselves.”

Goldberg’s mantra, extrap-

olated, seeks to impart the notion that each time a student performs what’s called a “Breath Brake,” where they employ their breathing techniques to re-center, they are also helping a child, somewhere, gain the same empowerment. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle of good that is meant to teach, inform and empower.

KKC’s Chairman of the Board Robert Bronstein, whose $1 million gift launched the nonprofit’s new, multi-year fundraising effort, is bullish on the Heroes

Circle’s new CRI program as a natural outgrowth of the organization’s central tenet of helping children gain control in a world often not in their control. “It really feels like everything is firing on all cylinders, and there's definitely really good momentum,” Bronstein said.

At the conclusion of our Zoom interview, Leah, the fourth-grader whose bravery facing her illness was on full display during our chat, summed up the culture Goldberg espouses when speaking about bringing more light into the world.

“It makes me feel like I have joy because I'm teaching others,” she said, “so they can learn it, and they can do it, and they can teach other people, so they can take control of themselves, too.”

Bryan Gottlieb is a freelance writer in Detroit and a media consultant working with Kids Kicking Cancer.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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COURTESY OF OU

OUR COMMUNITY Oakland students at the Bedouin tent experience.

Archaeological Discoveries Oakland U. study abroad team anxiously anticipating a return to Israel.

Oakland students at Caesarea, 2018 Dr. Pytlik excavates loom weights at Khirbet Arai, 2019

Oakland group at the Ophel Archaeological garden, Jerusalem.

Oakland student excavates a room at Khirbet Qeiyafa

DR. MICHAEL PYTLIK SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

O

akland University’s Israel Study Abroad program had completed 11 consecutive trips to Israel since 2009 — until the pandemic put an end to that annual streak in 2020. Since its inception, I, along with co-faculty members Dr. Richard Stamps and Dr. Jon Carroll, have planned these visits, and the program has been successful due in large part to the generous support from the Jewish community.

This program began when administrators from Oakland toured Israel while they were cementing relations with other academic programs in Israel. Touring in Israel inevitably means visiting archaeological sites. This seemed like a nice fit for students who studied anthropology, archaeology and Judaic Studies at Oakland, and I offered to lead the trips, having already been to Israel dozens of

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times and worked at numerous archaeological sites.

In 2009, students were fully funded thanks to generous donors. That trip included a week at the now-famous site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, identified as biblical Sha’arayim. An additional week included a tour of Israel.

The students were greatly moved by their experiences in Israel, and several of them returned the following year to continue the work.

In 2009, Oakland, participating with Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was able to confirm the identity of the site as Sha’arayim, mentioned in the David and Goliath story.

This site was dug for another four years and exciting finds awaited the students every year; students also visited such important sites as Beth Shean, En-Gedi, Masada, continued on page 20

APRIL 8 • 2021

Oakland student at Lachish

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☐ Call jhelp at 1-833-445-4357 ☐ Visit jhelp.org ☐ Chat online with a staff member or schedule a call at jhelp.org

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We Have Answers.

Supported through the generosity of The Jewish Fund and the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Family Foundation.

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APRIL 8 • 2021

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OUR COMMUNITY

A Cure within Reach Student, 22, with friends’ help, is seeking funds for a bone marrow transplant.

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

A

Huntington Woods resident is raising funds for a lifesaving bone marrow transplant, and he’s receiving the help of friends, family, community and a charity to make it happen.

Colton Teicher, a 22-year-old Wayne State University student, Colton was diagnosed in Teicher 2019 with Chronic Granulomatous Disease, a rare immune system disorder. Teicher has had health problems since he was born but was misdiagnosed for the first 20 years of his life.

Finally with the correct diagnosis, the transplant team at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center (NIH) in Bethesda, Md., recommended the transplant for Teicher.

Huntington Woods volunteers are now raising $50,000 for the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA), a national 501(c)3 charity dedicated to organizing and guiding communities in raising funds for transplant-related expenses, to assist with Teicher’s expenses.

Teicher came up with a team of about 15 friends to help run the fundraiser.

“I have amazing friends,” Teicher said. “I knew they would say yes the minute I was considering doing this, but, honestly, they’re going above and beyond what I was expecting them to do.”

A week into the fundraiser, just through putting it out on Facebook and Instagram, it’s hit more than half its goal; already over $25,000.

“I was expecting maybe $3,000 so far,” Teicher said.

“Friends of friends or friends from high school I haven’t talked to in years have contributed, and I’m really grateful for that, and amazed by people’s generosity.”

Events for the fundraiser include one at Panera Bread in Royal Oak on April 15 from 4-8 p.m. Another event is a Krispy Kreme fundraiser taking place at any location in the country until April 10. More information on these events can be found at COTAforColton.com.

Teicher will be at NIH on May 14 for preliminary testing, and they will begin looking for bone marrow donors around that time as well.

“I have 10,000 matches on the bone marrow registry, and we just need to find the right one,” Teacher said. “Hopefully the actual transplant will start in August but may be pushed to September at the latest.”

Volunteers are needed for the COTA community campaign. Individuals and groups interested in more information should contact Community Coordinator Sari Grossman at (248) 978-9737 or orgsari@ umich.edu.

Contributions may be sent to COTA, 2501 W. COTA Drive, Bloomington, IN 47403.

Checks should be made payable to COTA, with “In Honor of Colton” written on the memo line. Secure credit card gifts are accepted online at COTAforColton.com.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL continued from page 18

Herodium, Gamla, Akko, Tel Aviv, Megiddo and, of course, Jerusalem.

Over the years, students experienced an in-depth visit to a Druze village for lunch and lecture, visited the home and orange groves of an Israeli farmer, and enjoyed an overnight stay at a Bedouin tent. The excavation at Sha’arayim made world news when it was associated to the early kingdom of David, c.

1000 B.C.E. From 2014 to 2017, Oakland moved to the site of Lachish, a monumental tel (a manmade mound consisting of the stratified debris from the accumulated refuse of generations of people) southwest of Jerusalem.

The goal here was to determine when the early monarchy of Judah fortified the site. It took four hard seasons of work at this

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APRIL 8 • 2021

complicated site, but not before the team excavated a Canaanite temple dated to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1300 B.C.E.).

Digging immediately under the national park footpath, the team exposed the temple and portions of a Canaanite palace nearby. The finds were rich, and the students enjoyed off time by visiting Masada, taking behindthe-scenes tours of Herodium, the location of King Herod’s tomb, Yad Vashem, the Israel Museum and, of course, the Dead Sea. LINK TO KING DAVID In 2018 and 2019, the team ventured to a new site known as Khirbet al-Rai. This site is further west of Lachish. In the two seasons at this site, we announced that the site should be identified as biblical Ziklag.

Students learn surveying at the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa, 2009

This site was given to David before he was king by the Philistine King of Gath, Achish (I Samuel 27).

Such exciting finds fuel the student experiences as does touring exciting sites in the country.

Our canceled 2020 trip was to have included an expanded itinerary and included an extra day in Jerusalem, a private tour of the Temple road site, and a

special weekend in Safed.

We hope that 2021 or 2022 (at the latest) will see us back in Israel!

Dr. Michael Pytlik is director of Judaic Studies, the Cis Maisel Center for Judaic Studies and Community Engagement and the Study Abroad in Israel, an archaeological field school and culture tour. Find more information about the program at www.oakland.edu/ie/ou-programs/israel.

Online baking class celebrates the mitzvah of challah.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

S

everal times a month, Jewish women can tune into a new broadcast that celebrates the art of making delicious challah bread.

The traditional braided bread of Eastern European origin is at the Shaindel center of Flour Fink Power, a virtual challah baking class taught by master baker Pam Turkin. In these 90-min-

ute Zoom sessions, participants are shown how to create their own dough, how to braid it and learn about the unique hidden power of challah.

“Jewish women are drawn to the idea of making challah, but they don’t necessarily understand the power of it and how it can affect your home,” explains Shaindel Fink of Partners Detroit, an organization that offers a wide variety of programs to enhance Jewish life in Metro Detroit.

Fink explains that challah is associated with the power of prayer and that baking challah can help people connect with their Jewish heritage and culture. Challah can promote memories, tradition and a sense of community, all three of which are touched upon in the virtual program.

Each session of Flour Power, which was officially launched in January of this year, costs $18. Registration is limited to 12 people per class

to help ensure an intimate small group experience. The $18 fee includes the delivery of a gift bag to each participant with a full-color challah cookbook with recipes of different origins, a pair of candles, an ornate blessing card and a do-it-yourself challah cover for parents to create with their children. The bags are usually delivered to the participants’ houses within a week following the program.

Participants will tune into continued on page 22 FAR LEFT: Pam Turkin demonstrates how to braid challah.

Turkin walks through each step in the process.

CENTER: An intricately braided challah ready to bake.

LEFT: After each session, participants have a ready-to-eat loaf.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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DAVID SELMAR

OUR COMMUNITY

“CHALLAH TAPS INTO OUR FEMININE ENERGY.” — PARTNERS DETROIT’S SHAINDEL FINK FLOUR POWER continued from page 21

Seema Selmar

Forging a New Path JVS Human Services’ Women to Work program changes lives.

ALISON SCHWARTZ SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

F

or Seema Selmar, her chosen career path to become a lawyer hit a speed bump early on. She was living in Israel where she had just started her undergraduate law degree, when her family decided to move back to the U.S. With law being a postgraduate subject in the U.S., Selmar had to choose another profession to study, landing on business and ultimately becoming a credit analyst in New York.

Then came marriage to David and seven children, including one with special needs, so Selmar’s career was put on hold while she brought up her family.

Selmar of Oak Park, a member of Dovid Ben Nachum Synagogue and affiliated with Yeshivah Gedolah, eventually worked part time as a teacher.

However, she “kept going back to my initial career idea, something in the legal field, but I didn’t know how to make that work,” she said.

Six years ago, Selmar heard about Women to Work, a four-week course run by JVS Human Services that provides critical skills to women who have been out of the workforce.

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APRIL 8 • 2021

Participants are given a myriad of resoucres vital to securing a job. The program has helped approximately 2,000 find a new direction for their working lives since its launch in the 1980.

For Selmar, now 63, the program led training in civil and domestic mediation, and she now works as a volunteer for the Oakland Mediation Center and is considering opening her own mediation business.

Judy Richmond, Women to Work coordinator, says there has never been a more important time for her program. “The pandemic has hit women in the workforce especially hard.

Some have had to stay home with children when schools were closed, others were in jobs which simply dried up as businesses closed,” Richmond said.

“Learning new and vital skills can make all the difference to finding work quickly.”

The next virtual session of Women to Work runs from April 20-May 13 and includes eight sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9-11 a.m. For more information and to register, contact Richmond at (248) 233-4232 or jrichmond@ jvshumanservices.org.

the Sunday class to make their dough alongside Turkin. An educator from Partners Detroit will also join the class to share details on the many positive influences that challah can instill in a woman’s life.

“Pam is an experienced baking teacher,” Fink says.

“She has a successful business of teaching people to bake all kinds of things over Zoom, but challah is really her passion.”

Fink and Turkin, who are longtime friends, have recently been studying the mitzvah of challah and the blessings it can bring to those who are involved in it.

When Turkin had the idea of sharing this knowledge with others and turning the art of challah into a class people can participate in, Fink says Partners Detroit was all for it. They collaborated with nonprofit Jewish engagement and literacy organization PJ Library, plus JFamily Detroit, to get the idea off the ground. They developed advertising, what the program would look like and how to get it out into the local community.

‘A HUGE SUCCESS’ Generating excitement wasn’t difficult. “It’s really been a huge success,” Fink says. Flour Power has even seen three generations of women in a family sign up for the program together, connecting while fulfilling a timeless Jewish tradition.

They practice different types of funky braids, ranging all

the way from a heart shaped challah to a nine-braid loaf.

In each class, women get a chance to reminisce on their memories of making challah or other meaningful Jewish memories, something Turkin often asks participants to share with the group. It’s part of the reason why Flour Power limits classes to small sizes, despite demand. “Once 12 people register for any given class, we’ll close registration for that class,” Fink says. “We don’t want to give up the intimacy of it.”

Fink and Turkin plan to continue the program up to the summer, when they’ll take a short break from classes, and then resume later. “We’re definitely happy to go forward with it for as long as we can,” Fink says from a Partners Detroit perspective. “We’ve found that people, even people who’ve never made challah before, love the experience.”

Fink explains there is something “deeply satisfying” about baking, especially when baking is connected to a spiritual element. Flour Power gives participants a chance to learn to make challah from the comfort of their own homes, creating a variety of new challah breads for Shabbat and beyond.

“Challah taps into our feminine energy,” Fink says.

“It’s really been a special class.”

To register for Flour Power, visit partnersdetroit.org/flour-power.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF FLORINE MARK

End of a Chapter

SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Florine Mark sells her Weight Watchers franchise.

On her “Ask Florine” TV news segment

SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

F

lorine Mark, pioneering Michigan businesswoman, civic volunteer and philanthropist, has sold the WW Group, her Weight Watchers franchise in Michigan and Ontario, to parent company WW International. Financial terms were not disclosed. Mark was the franchise founder and served as its president and chief executive officer at its Farmington Hills headquarters.

“It was time,” she says of her decision, made with her children, to sell Weight Watchers.

“It’s bittersweet. I’ve been in this business for 50 years. My joy is being able to help people get healthy,” Mark says.

According to Mark, COVID temporarily ended in-person Weight Watchers classes, and she anticipates that attendance will be limited as some WW studios reopen. “Weight Watchers has closed most of its centers and wants to go digital. They have great apps, but I’m not in the digital business,” Mark explains.

According to Nick Hotchkin, COO of WW

International, “WW International acquired the WW Group’s franchise businesses in Michigan and Ontario, Canada. As we execute on our vision of bringing wellness to Florine Mark all, we look forward to at a WW delivering a consistent Celebrating Our Success member experience to event.

WW members in these regions. We want to thank the WW Group Bank of Chicago.) and the Mark family for 55 Eventually, she found years of helping members on financing and opened her first their wellness journeys.”

Michigan Weight Watchers franchise in 1966. Mark subPIONEER, ENTREPRENEUR sequently expanded the busiAs a young married woman ness to 14 states, Canada and with five children living in Mexico. Most of these franDetroit, Mark struggled to chises were sold for a reported lose weight, even trying diet $180 million in 2003. pills. While in New York, she Weight Watchers is a pointenrolled in Weight Watchers based, healthy eating system and was able to lose 50 that has received awards for its pounds. Michigan didn’t have effectiveness. Mark has been a a Weight Watchers program, very visible public face of the and Mark was inspired to company, hosting a podcast, open a franchise. appearing on a regular “Ask As a woman entrepreneur, Florine” health segment on she initially had difficulty WDIV, and doing motivaobtaining a bank loan. (Years tional speeches to encourage later, Mark chaired the Detroit healthy lifestyles. In addition Branch of the Federal Reserve to individual members, the

WW Group has worked with employers seeking to promote healthy habits among their workforce.

Mark has a three-year contract to work for WW International. “I don’t want to retire. I’m a motivator.

Maybe I can be a consultant for companies — helping employees to be the best they can be,” she says.

She volunteers on many nonprofit boards, which “takes up wonderful time,” including serving as a lifetime Federation board member and chairing the Jewish Community Center. Mark received Federation’s William Davidson Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Previously, she was an at-large board member and has served on several of its committees. Mark was the first woman to serve on the Detroit Renaissance (now Business Leaders for Michigan) board and has received many honors for her business and civic achievements.

Now that she’ll have more free time, Mark says that she may return to playing the piano and might take singing lessons. She continues to attend a weekly virtual Weight Watchers session and uses a Fitdesk, a stationary bicycle with a platform for a tablet, to help stay fit while working.

According to WW International, local Weight Watchers members will be able to continue their memberships, which include a digital and physical workshop plan, as well as a new digital option with coaching.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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23

OUR COMMUNITY

A New Season without

‘Mr. Tiger’

Remembering my favorite baseball legends.

Al Kaline

IRWIN COHEN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

O

ur beloved “Mr. Tiger,” Al Kaline, died during the first week of the 2020 baseball season.

In the year since, more than 100 former major leaguers, including Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Whitey Ford, Tommy Lasorda and Tom Seaver, also died. None of the aforementioned, though, impacted me as much as someone who joined Detroit in 1955, Kaline’s best season with the Tigers.

Those of us who were old enough can recall when Kaline won the American League batting championship by hitting .340 and hit 27 home runs at the age of 20 that season. I was at the ballpark on a sunny Sunday when the Tigers slaughtered the Kansas City Athletics 16-0, and Kaline contributed three home runs, two in one inning. I viewed the game from the lower rightfield bleachers, but J.W. Porter had a much better view from the

bench in the Tiger dugout.

J.W. Porter broke into the major leagues with the St. Louis Browns in 1952 at the age of 19.

He was the only player in the majors without a first name.

Porter’s parents didn’t give him one as they said they used up all the names they liked on their four other children.

After playing in his first game with the Browns on July 30, he called his wife, and the former high school sweethearts shared the good news. They decided that since her father was visiting at their last minor league stop in Colorado, his wife and fatherin-law should drive together to their full-time home in Oakland, Calif.

J.W.’s wife and her father were killed the next day by a drowsy driver when his car jumped to the wrong side of the road.

Authorities contacted Browns’ owner Bill Veeck who gave J.W. the sad news and made all the arrangements for his young catcher. After taking a week off for the funerals, Porter lived in an apartment in the ballpark that Veeck provided, and his teammates, including the legendary Satchell Paige, tried to cheer him up.

JOINING THE TIGERS Porter was traded to Detroit after the season but wore an army uniform for the next two years before becoming Kaline’s friend and teammate in 1955. After three seasons of limited playing

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time with the Tigers, Porter wore the uniforms of the Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators and St. Louis Cardinals, where he made his last major league appearance on the last day of the 1959 season by replacing Stan Musial at first base.

After J.W. dreidled around the minor leagues, including a managerial stint in the 1960s, Ted Williams used his connections to land him a job with Sears. It was a great move as he found love again and married one of the company’s secretaries, and they were a team for 52 years until his passing last October at 87.

SPRING TRAINING They lived a couple of miles north of my winter dugout in West Palm Beach, and I often saw him during spring training. The last time I saw him, he walked with his familiar cane, fashioned from a baseball bat.

We sat together in the first row of a small bleacher area behind the home plate screen where the Houston Astros were taking batting practice in one of their practice fields in West Palm.

The soft-spoken Porter had numerous stories and patiently answered all of my questions about my favorite baseball decade, the 1950s. His wife summed him up best. “He was a sweet soul,” she told the Palm Beach Post. “He always wrote a note and a letter to every person who requested an autograph.

And people would write back

J.W. Porter

and thank him for the letter.”

Fast forward to the 2021 baseball season that’s upon us. The Tigers aren’t too interesting. The most interesting name to me is Robbie Grossman, an extra outfielder who is an average player at best. But those are the kind of players I root for. Grossman, who is not Jewish, will probably see more playing time with the Tigers than the several teams he played for in the past few years as the Tigers outfield is one of the worst in the league.

But there is hope on the horizon as the baseball mavens in both leagues claim the Tigers have some blue chip prospects in the minor leagues, including infielder Spencer Torkelson, a good hitter with a lot of power.

Time will tell, but in the meantime, we can watch overpaid first baseman Miguel Cabrera inch toward 3,000 career hits and 500 career home runs, milestones he should reach during the 2021 season.

Author and public speaker Irwin Cohen headed a national baseball monthly for five years and worked in the front office for the Detroit Tigers, where he earned a 1984 World Series ring. He went on to write several Detroit and baseball history books. He may be reached in his dugout at irdav@sbcglobal.net.

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OUR COMMUNITY

Rosalie Schwartz

Life Lessons ... Shared Retired psychotherapist pens advice book as a “labor of love.”

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

R

osalie Schwartz, an 84-year-old retired psychotherapist, always wanted to write a book. It was only a matter of putting pen to paper. Her plan was to share her life’s lessons with the world and other tidbits of wisdom she had picked up along the way.

When the pandemic hit last March, Schwartz realized it was the perfect opportunity to finally get started on the project she always had in the back of her mind. Over the course of the past year, she put together

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her book, In the Blink of an Eye: A Personal Journey of Life and Lessons Learned.

Throughout the 98-page book, which was released in February on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle format, the Metro Detroit-based writer gives forth what she calls “pearls of wisdom,” little sayings that virtually anyone can live their life by. She has also decided to donate all proceeds to local food banks and community members in need.

Quotes like “We have two

ears and one mouth so that we can listen more than we speak” and “It’s hard to be a person” are connected back to Schwartz’ memories and life experiences, explaining how they correlate and what others can learn from her story. They pull from both her personal life and career, which Schwartz began later than most.

As her children grew older, she made the decision to go back to school at the age of 40.

“I fell in love with it,” she recalls of her education at the University of Michigan.

Previously, Schwartz didn’t have post-secondary education.

“I had the best of both worlds.

I was able to raise my children and then go back to school and back to work.”

She received an undergraduate degree in social work and built a career working in the public sector. For 20 years, she worked at an agency as a therapist and later a program director. Then, Schwartz transitioned into private practice for another 20 years, retiring just two years ago at the age of 82.

“During the past many years, I thought to myself that when I had some time, I was going to write a book and share my experiences of life,” Schwartz recalls.

Helping people learn life skills was second nature for the retired psychotherapist, who helped counsel hundreds throughout her career. She even developed the term “pearls of wisdom” alongside her grandchildren, to whom she would send a different “pearl” each week as they attended college.

CONCERN FOR THE HUNGRY Throughout the COVID-19 shutdown, Schwartz made it a point to sit down and work on her book. She wrote for months until it was finally finished. Then, during a visit to Temple Israel, the synagogue she attends, she noticed a long line of people in cars.

“I didn’t know what they were doing,” she explains.

Schwartz spoke to her rabbi, who mentioned the line of cars was there for a food drive. Temple Israel members were dropping off food that would later be donated to different food banks in need.

Schwartz learned the drive happened monthly, which gave her an idea. “My heart was breaking when I watched television and saw all these people standing in line for food,” she says of the pandemic, which had tremendous financial impact on many families, including in the local community. “That was a motivation for me to complete this book, so I could donate the proceeds to the food banks.”

Though Schwartz says it’s a smaller book, she notes she was anxious to complete it instead of taking more time to build it out further, which she believes she could have done. However, she wanted to help the community as soon as possible and already has a strong start on donations.

Since the book’s release in February, Schwartz has been collecting money (and will continue to do so with all future proceeds) that she aims to split between Yad Ezra, Gleaners Community Food Bank and Forgotten Harvest.

In the meantime, she explains she’ll continue writing more life lessons.

“That’s my plan,” she says.

“It was a labor of love.”

The

‘Inside’ Scoop Veteran journalist and Oak Park native starts pandemic publication.

BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

DOUG DWORKIN

ndrea Sachs tried, but she just couldn’t stop being a journalist.

Sachs, who grew up in Oak Park and received B.A. and J.D. degrees at University of Michigan, tried to go back to her first love, English literature, when she retired from Time magazine in 2014.

Andrea She was working Sachs on her Ph.D. thesis (on the works of Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright) at Hunter College in New York when COVID hit.

“From the beginning of the pandemic, I was drawn to write about that,” said Sachs, founder and editor of The Insider, a weekly online magazine she

Andrea Sachs celebrates receiving her COVID vaccination in the detergent aisle at a New York pharmacy.

started in March 2020. The name is a pun of sorts; it’s an inside view of pandemic life for people stuck inside. Its motto, printed on the masthead is “Hands on the heart, six feet apart.”

Sachs aimed her magazine at friends and family, but thanks to word-of-mouth and social media, readership ballooned. In February, The Insider grew 42 percent to reach 10,000 unique viewers.

The Insider — view it at theinsider1.com — is produced by a band of writers and editors who work communally but remotely.

Sachs estimates more than a dozen Jews who live in or formerly lived in Metro Detroit have written for the magazine.

They include former Detroit News columnist Laura Berman; wellknown Detroit attorney David Fink; Merrill Lynn Hansen, a paralegal from West Bloomfield; industrial psychologist Alan Resnick of Farmington Hills; Tobye S. Stein, a retired human resources officer from Northville; Joel Dzodin, formerly of Oak Park, who now lives in Israel; Bonnie Fishman, well-known chef who recently moved to California and Jessie Siegel, formerly of Oak Park, who now lives in Washington, D.C. “It really surprised me that people were coming to me who wanted to write,” Sachs said. “I think people have a lot on their mind right now because of the pandemic, and I think people want to talk about it.”

The Insider has written about

people who survived COVID and run obituaries on those who didn’t. Three writers chronicled their own battles with the virus.

After graduating from college in the mid-1970s, Sachs prepared for a law career. She’d considered getting a graduate degree in English, but colleges weren’t hiring English teachers at the time, so it seemed like a dead end.

The legal profession was adding women, and law schools were looking for promising female students. Her father, the late Ted Sachs, was a successful Detroit attorney who loved his work. So, she enrolled in U-M’s law school.

Sachs says she knew it was a mistake almost from Day 1 but stuck with it, graduating and taking a job as a government attorney in Washington, D.C. Her epiphany came, after three unhappy years as a lawyer, on March 30, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan was shot.

“I ran down to the hospital where he was taken because it was history in the making,” she said. “I watched the print reporters do person-on-the-street interviews and was interviewed by three female journalists about my own age. I was AWOL from work all day; I never went back to my office. When I left the hospital grounds, all I could think was, ‘This is what I want to do!’”

She knew that day she was meant to be a journalist.

CAREER AT TIME She moved to New York shortly afterward and got a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1983.

After “a nanosecond” working at Glamour and Good Housekeeping, she joined Time magazine in 1984 and stayed for 29 years, covering the legal and book publishing beats.

She left in 2014 after a corporate reorganization. “I got out when the going was good!” she said, adding, “There were other things I wanted to do.”

Sachs has borne the startup costs and ongoing expenses of The Insider, whose contributors are unpaid. “No one’s getting rich working for The Insider, least of all me,” she said. “It’s a labor of love for all of us.”

She is starting to look for ways to bring in paid advertising and plans to pass along any income to her contributors. “As someone who’s made her living as a journalist, the last thing I want to do is exploit writers!” she said.

Sachs says she expects The Insider to continue past the pandemic because the problems and opportunities raised by the disease will last. “I think we’re all in for a change of lifestyles for a while,” she said.

Contact Andrea Sachs at editor@ theinsider1.com.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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NOSH

COURTESY OF GREAT LAKES POT PIE

EATS | DRINKS | SWEETS

Jannie Teitelbaum holds one of her signature pies.

Comfort Food Turning a childhood treat into a thriving pot pie destination.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

G

rowing up, Jannie Teitelbaum had a love for chicken pot pies. Now, she’s transformed one of her favorite childhood foods into a successful business headquartered in Clawson.

Great Lakes Pot Pie, which opened last April during the pandemic, serves up fresh pot pies in a variety of flavors. From classic chicken to meatball, each handmade pie is crafted with locally sourced ingredients. The pies even come in gluten-free or vegan versions, and as bitesize pie chips that range from savory to sweet.

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There’s also chocolate pecan pie up for grabs.

It was a business idea that was born by accident. Teitelbaum, who is originally from New York and previously lived in Virginia before moving to Bloomfield Hills in 2009, was part of a women’s group where each member would bring a signature dish. For the Jewish entrepreneur, who has also previously launched an art business, she decided to bake a pie to share with the group.

“I baked a pie one night and somebody said, ‘This is really good!’” Teitelbaum, 60, recalls. “So, she ordered one and said, ‘Are you doing it as a business?’ And I said, ‘I guess I am.’”

The original recipe was one that Teitelbaum spent six months perfecting. “I spent a lot of time reading tons and tons of recipes,” she recalls. She considered seasonings, the amount of chicken broth, levels of butter and many other processes that go into baking a perfect pot pie. Most importantly, though, aside from flavor, was that the pies needed to hold their shape.

“When you eat a small personal-sized pie, you dig into it with a spoon or fork,” Teitelbaum said. “When you have a big pie, you cut a slice, so you have to make sure that it’s not too liquidy or the whole thing will implode.”

“I SPENT A LOT OF TIME READING TONS AND TONS OF RECIPES.” — JANNIE TEITELBAUM

After trial-and-error, Teitelbaum finally settled on a winning recipe in September 2015. She knew it was a hit when her then17-year-old son Steven, who served as pie taste-tester, exclaimed that it was the one. The Teitelbaum family began selling the pot pies at Royal Oak Farmers Market, where they started to see many people lining up to purchase their pies each weekend.

For Teitelbaum, who was considering retiring, she originally decided to take it easy and only make a handful of pies throughout the week. Yet, seeing the success and interest her pies rolled in inspired her to take the idea one step further. Rather than baking out of a commercial kitchen at a church, where she previously made her pies, she decided to seek out her own retail space.

Visit Israel Virtually From Home CLARA SILVER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

GROWING IN CLAWSON About two years ago, she found Great Lakes Pot Pie’s current location in Clawson and worked to secure the lease over the course of a year. Finally, by the time the pandemic hit, she was ready to open her business, named after her love for all things local. While many restaurant businesses struggled throughout this time, Teitelbaum found an unexpected silver lining: People were seeking out frozen foods, and it turned out pot pies were both easy to freeze and heat up.

“We did really well,” she remembers. “Each week we got busier and busier.”

Teitelbaum was able to build the business at her own pace, thanks to the pandemic slowing down foot traffic and the restaurant industry in general.

She wouldn’t have had it any other way, though, because it allowed her space and time to figure out exactly how her pot pie business would look.

Now, Great Lakes Pot Pie has 12 employees. They’re continuing to grow, with both

of Teitelbaum’s sons, Matthew and Steven, helping her run the operation. They’ve even expanded to begin offering local delivery and shipping nationwide. Teitelbaum also took over the lease next door to the pie shop, which she plans to turn into a production space where passersby can watch pies being made through the glass windows.

Eventually, she’d like to serve up her favorite childhood dish at more than one location. “I want the pies to be in grocery stores, maybe some specialty stores,” Teitelbaum says.

In the meantime, though, she’ll continue pouring her love into each pie that goes out the Clawson door.

“I taste every single batch of chicken that gets made,” she continues. “I have to get that memory when I taste it that reminds me why I love chicken pot pie so much. It’s really important, and I think people can tell when they eat our pie, because it’s the right flavor.”

Order pot pies at greatlakespotpies.com.

The Israel Experience: Don’t Leave Home to Visit, hosted by the Israel Center at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, will take participants on the tour of a lifetime without ever having to leave the comfort of home from May 9-16.

The “trip” to Israel is shaping up to be a mosaic of historical and modern, including a “walking” tour of Jerusalem, a deep dive into the street art of Tel Aviv and a cooking workshop with an Arab Israeli chef.

A full day of programs with Ann Arbor’s sister community, Moshav Nahalal, is also in the works, including a cheesemaking workshop

highlighting the moshav’s dairy farm and a dance class for kids and adults of all ages.

Take a run “through” Nahalal or try kabbalistic meditation “in” Tzfat.

Supplies will be provided for pick up in Ann Arbor for hands-on workshops.

Journeys International is the tour organizer. Each activity will cost a reduced rate of $18, or an all-inclusive rate of $180 for the entire event, thanks to the sponsorship of the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation.

Information and registration are at jccannarbor.org or register at (734) 971-0990.

Financial Literacy Awareness Month April is National Financial Literacy Awareness Month.

The purpose of this month is to highlight the importance of gaining practical money management skills and support systems for teaching Americans how to establish and maintain positive, healthy financial habits.

This year, in honor of National Financial Literacy Awareness Month, Bloom Advisors is offering webinars on a wide range of topics that are free and open to the public.

The seminars include “Taking Control of your Finances” 6 p.m. April 1; “Back to Basics: Savings

and Investing 101” 6 p.m.

April 13; “Financial Wellness for Women” 6 p.m. April 15; “Let’s Talk Retirement: Everything You Need to Know About Managing Your Portfolio and Income Needs in Retirement” 6 p.m.

April 20; “Estate Planning 101: Leaving A Financial Legacy and Protecting Those You Love” 6 p.m. April 22; “Millennials & Money: Setting Yourself Up for Success” 6 p.m. April 27; and “Your Financial Questions Answered!” 6 p.m. April 29.

To register, visit the seminar page at bloomadvisors. com/seminars.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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Yoga Therapy

HEALTH

Can Help!

It’s a gentle way to improve one’s health and sense of well-being.

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Yoga therapist Veronica Zador provides an on-site session.

T

he original intent of yoga, derived from ancient spiritual practices in India, was training the body and mind to self-observe through a series of physical poses and breathing exercises.

By this means, the body would be rejuvenated.

Yoga therapy, however, expands the concept, bringing “the tools of yoga into the healthcare setting to give people accessible methods to improve their health and well-being,” said certified yoga therapist Veronica Zador of West Bloomfield, a worldwide leader in her profession.

As opposed to “regular” yoga held in a studio, the yoga therapist generally meets in a clinical setting with individuals, referred to as patients, on a oneto-one or small group/symptom-specific basis.

Hospitals, clinics and schools are among the clients that bring yoga therapists to “help offset moral injury or compassion fatigue” among their staff. Both terms denote the experience of essential worker “burnout.”

“People can learn effective ways to reverse pain and discomfort, and self-activate their own sense of comfort, restfulness, strength and composure

“PEOPLE CAN LEARN EFFECTIVE WAYS TO REVERSE PAIN AND DISCOMFORT.” — YOGA THERAPIST VERONICA ZADOR

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through breathing, meditation and, if appropriate, adaptive movement,” Zador said.

Zador, who earned her bachelor of science degree at Cleveland State University, founded the International Institute of Yoga Therapy (IIYT), one of the first accredited yoga therapy programs in Michigan.

IIYT was also among the first yoga therapy certification programs in the U.S. held under the auspices of a hospital (it was formerly based at Beaumont Healthcare System in Royal Oak). With the COVID pandemic keeping people apart,

IIYT opened its “virtual” doors on Jan. 17, and nearly 100 people joined in a Zoom celebration.

Zador’s interest in yoga therapy began 30 years ago, teaching at her own studio, Namaste Yoga, in Royal Oak. Realizing a deeper aspect to the field of yoga, Zador made sure each person received the maximum benefit with techniques tailored to his or her needs, even within a group class.

Zador’s credentials include two terms as president of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, a group she helped revive by organizing

LEARN YOGA THERAPY International Institute of Yoga Therapy, a 2½-year program, currently has 56 upper-level students enrolled. Registration is underway for all levels of yoga therapist training starting in September. Previous yoga teacher training is a prerequisite. IIYT is also offering four free 60-minute one-onone yoga therapy sessions on Zoom, supervised and monitored

by IIYT clinical extern coordinators. For information, contact iiyogatherapy.com, info@iiyogatherapy or (248) 672-9191.

Long-term Care, End-of-Life Planning

Yoga therapist Donna Raphael

three well-attended conferences in Los Angeles. She also served two terms as vice president of Yoga Alliance (YA), the representational organization for yoga teachers. She was chair of yoga standards for YA, including Prenatal Yoga and Yoga for Children Standards.

SPECIALISTS TEACH Zador’s accredited school includes certified yoga therapists as faculty, with M.Ds. and Ph.Ds. as adjunct faculty giving lectures on their medical specialties, and staff faculty to provide instruction in clinical applications of yoga therapy.

Specialists are brought to lecture, Zador said, “because breast cancer, for example, is not our area of expertise, but we need to understand the disease and work on clinical adaptations for yoga therapy. We can help patients self-manage symptoms of their disease, before and after surgery.”

Members of her family are involved with IIYT. The business manager is her husband, Dr. Ivan Zador, a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and retired from DMC Hutzel Women’s Hospital in Detroit. Formerly

from Cleveland, they belong to the Birmingham Temple in Farmington Hills.

Their daughter Lara Zador, M.D., senior anesthesiologist and director of Henry Ford Health System’s Multidisciplinary Pain Clinic, is an adjunct faculty member.

Three grandchildren from their teacher daughter, Liza Wade, assist in the school’s Yoga for Children program, for ages 7-13.

Certified yoga therapist Donna Raphael of Bloomfield Township, also a yoga teacher, learned of Zador’s school in 2014. Completing the externship program in January 2018, Raphael said, has “totally transformed my teaching and my own yoga practice.”

Zador, Raphael’s mentor, “brings the ancient yoga teaching into the practical application of helping people as they are — whether they are dealing with chronic pain or side effects of disease, or if they want to improve their own health.”

Raphael added, “Yoga therapy helps us find our inner strength as we live in a stressful world.

“It becomes more and more important as we grow older.”

Talking about end-of-life care isn’t easy, but it’s necessary. Do you know your loved one’s wishes? Who will speak for you when you’re not able to?

Join Jewish Family Service 2 p.m. Friday, April 16, via Zoom for National Healthcare Decisions Day where you’ll learn what goes into long-term care planning, including appointing a health care proxy and understanding the legalities of a DNR and how to get difficult conversations started.

Speakers will be attorney Howard H. Collens and Lynn Breuer, a licensed clinical social worker, certified health coach and dementia practitioner who helps older adults age in place.

Contact the JFS Resource Center at (248) 592-2313 or resourcecenter@jfsdetroit.org.

Lynn Breuer

Howard Collens

JVS Volunteers Build Skills In celebration of Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month (DDAM), JVS Human Services reports participants of its Skill Building Assistance (SBA) program continued to volunteer at multiple service sites throughout the past year.

Through the SBA program, individuals with disabilities build their skills and become more integrated into the community through meaningful volunteer work at local nonprofit organizations.

Due to the pandemic, many of the program’s service sites suffered a decline in volunteers. SBA participants stepped up while adhering to safety measures to ensure the health of all involved.

JVS Skill Building participants prepare sandwiches at the Salvation Army.

Under the supervision of JVS job coaches, SBA participants volunteer an average of four hours a day on weekdays. They complete 10 routes every week through Meals on Wheels and prepare sandwiches for the Salvation Army.

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MAZEL TOV!

Riley Madison Belkin and Joely Brooke Belkin will share the bimah as they lead the congregation in prayer on the occasion of their b’not mitzvah at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield on Friday, April 9, 2021. They will be joined in celebration by their proud parents, Stacey and Martin Belkin. Joely and Riley are the loving grandchildren of Lynn and the late Kenneth Levine, and Elaine and Alan Belkin, and greatgrandchild of the late Jennie Fried.

The girls attend Derby Middle School in Birmingham. Among their many mitzvah projects, both Joely and Riley found it most meaningful to raise funds for Make a Difference Animal Rescue for abused and abandoned animals.

Talia Simone Hortick will lead the congregation in prayer as she becomes a bat mitzvah on Friday, April 9, 2021, at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield. She will be joined in celebration by her proud parents, Melissa and Brad Feldman and Marty and Alison Hortick. Also joining in celebration will be her siblings Maxwell, Emily, Allison and Robert. Talia is the loving grandchild of Simone Vitale, Jeanne Vitale and Jeffrey Parsons, Millie and the late Morton Feldman, Marilyn and Harvey Hortick, and Marci and Marvin Shulman.

She is a student at Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit in Farmington Hills. As part of her most meaningful mitzvah project, Talia created Caring Cards for COVID to lift people’s spirits during the pandemic.

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APRIL 8 • 2021

Mark Jerome Malinowski Shapiro, son of Dr. Susan Malinowski and Gary Shapiro, will chant from the Torah on the occasion of his bar mitzvah at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield on Saturday, April 10, 2021. He will be joined in celebration by his brother Max and his proud grandparents Drs. Jolanta

and Edward Malinowski.

He is also the loving grandchild of the late Jerome Shapiro and the late Mildred Shapiro.

Mark is a student at Cranbrook Kingswood Middle School for Boys in Bloomfield Hills. As part of his most meaningful mitzvah project, Mark volunteered at the Temple Israel Free Fresh Food Pantry.

Berman 90th

E

laine Berman of West Bloomfield celebrated her 90th birthday on Feb. 17, 2021, with her in-town children and their spouses and then this past week when all her children could be together.

Joining Elaine were daughter, Andrea Goldberg, with her husband, Jonas Goldberg; son, Scott Berman, and his wife, Cheryl Berman; and son, Larry Berman, with his wife, Catherine Berman. Due to the COVID pandemic, Elaine’s seven grandchildren (and their spouses) and five great-grandchildren all sent gifts and love. Her late husband of 71 years, Arnold Berman, was there in spirit.

HOW TO SUBMIT ANNOUNCEMENTS Mazel Tov! announcements are welcomed for members of the Jewish community. Anniversaries, engagements and weddings with a photo (preferably color) can appear at a cost of $18 each. Births are $10. There is no charge for bar/bat mitzvahs or for special birthdays starting at the 90th.

For information, contact Editorial Assistant Sy Manello at smanello@thejewishnews.com or (248) 351-5147 for information or for a mailed or emailed copy of guidelines.

SPIRIT

TORAH PORTION

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SPIRIT

Synagogue Directory CONSERVATIVE Adat Shalom Synagogue Farmington Hills (248) 851-5100 adatshalom.org

INDEPENDENT Grosse Pointe Jewish Council Grosse Pointe Woods (313) 882-6700 thegpjc.com

Ahavas Israel Grand Rapids (616) 949-2840 ahavasisraelgr.org

Kehillat Hatzhav Hagadol Mackinac Island (906) 202-9959 mackinacsynagogue.org

Congregation Beth Ahm West Bloomfield (248) 851-6880 cbahm.org

ORTHODOX Agudas Israel Mogen Abraham Southfield (248) 552-5711 aymadetroit.org

Beth Israel Flint (810) 732-6310 cbiflint.org Congregation Beth Shalom Oak Park (248) 547-7970 congbethshalom.org Beth Tephilath Moses Mt. Clemens (586) 996-3138 bethtephilathmoses.com B’nai Israel Synagogue West Bloomfield (248) 432-2729 bnaiisraelwb.org Congregation B’nai Moshe West Bloomfield (248) 788-0600 bnaimoshe.org Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue Detroit (313) 962-4047 downtownsynagogue.org Congregation Shaarey Zedek Southfield (248) 357-5544 shaareyzedek.org Temple B’nai Shalom Benton Harbor (269) 925-8021 tbnaishalom.org

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Ahavas Olam Southfield (248) 569-1821 Ahavasolam.com Ahavas Yisroel Oak Park (248) 298-2896 Learntorah.info Aish Hatorah in the Woods Oak Park (248) 327-3579 Aishdetroit.com Bais Chabad of Farmington Hills (248) 855-2910 chabad.org Bais Chabad of North Oak Park (248) 872-8878 chabad.org Bais Haknesses Hagrah Oak Park (248) 542-8737 Balfour Shul – K’Hal Rina U’Tefila Oak Park (732) 693-8457 Beth Tefilo Emanuel Tikvah Southfield (248) 559-5022

Birmingham-Bloomfield Shul Birmingham (248) 996-5818 bbchai.org

First Hebrew Congregation South Haven (269) 637-1603 firsthebrewcongregation.org

B’nai Israel-Beth Yehudah Oak Park (248) 967-3969 bi-by.org

Kehillat Etz Chayim Huntington Woods etzchayim-detroit.org

B’nai Zion Oak Park (248) 968-2414 Chabad House-Lubavitch of Eastern Michigan Flint (810) 230-0770 chabad.org Chabad Jewish Center of Commerce-Walled Lake Commerce Township (248) 363-3644 jewishcommerce.org Chabad Jewish Center of Novi-Northville Novi (248) 790-6075 novijewishcenter.com Chabad-Lubavitch of Bingham Farms Bloomfield Hills (248) 688-6796 chabadbinghamfarms.com Chabad of Western Michigan Grand Rapids (616) 957-0770 chabadwestmichigan.com Dovid Ben Nuchim-Aish Kodesh Oak Park (313) 320-9400 dbndetroit.org Etz Chayim of Toledo Toledo, OH (419) 473-2401 Etzchayimtoledo.org

Kollel Institute of Greater Detroit Oak Park (248) 968-1891 kollel@kolleldetroit.org Mishkan Israel, Nusach H’ari, Lubavitch Center Oak Park (248) 542-4844 theyeshiva.org Ohel Moed Shomrey Emunah West Bloomfield (248) 737-2626 ohelmoed.org Or Chadash Oak Park (248) 819-1721 or-chadash.org Sara & Morris Tugman Bais Chabad Torah Center of West Bloomfield (248) 855-6170 baischabad.com Shaar Hashomayim Windsor (519) 256-3123 Shaarey Zedek Windsor (519) 252-1594 shaareyzedekwindsor.com Shomer Israel Oak Park (248) 542-4014 godaven.com

Shomrey Emunah Southfield (248) 559-1533 congregation-shomreyemunah-105705.square.site The Shul-Chabad Lubavitch West Bloomfield (248) 788-4000 theshul.net Woodward Avenue Shul Royal Oak (248) 414-7485 thewas.net Yagdil Torah Southfield (248) 559-5905 Young Israel of Oak Park (248) 967-3655 yiop.org Young Israel of Southfield (248) 358-0154 yisouthfield.org RECONSTRUCTIONIST Congregation Kehillat Israel Lansing (517) 882-0049 kehillatisrael.net Congregation T’chiyah Oak Park (248) 823-7115 tchiyah.org Reconstructionist Congregation of Detroit (313) 567-0306 reconstructingjudiasm.org REFORM Bet Chaverim Canton (734) 480-8880 betchaverim@yahoo.com Temple Benjamin Mt. Pleasant (989) 773-5086 templebenjamin.com

Congregation Beth El Windsor (519) 969-2422 bethelwindsor.ca

Temple Israel West Bloomfield (248) 661-5700 temple-israel.org

MINYANS Fleischman Residence West Bloomfield (248) 661-2999

Temple Beth El Bloomfield Township (248) 851-1100 tbeonline.org

Temple Kol Ami West Bloomfield (248) 661-0040 tkolami.org

Yeshivat Akivah Southfield (248) 386-1625 farberhds.org

Temple Beth El Flint (810) 720-9494 tbeflint@gmail.com

Congregation Shaarey Zedek East Lansing (517) 351-3570 shaareyzedek.com

ANN ARBOR

Temple Beth El Midland (989) 496-3720 tbe_midland@yahoo.com

Temple Shir Shalom West Bloomfield (248) 737-8700 shirshalom.org

Beth Isaac Synagogue Trenton (734) 675-0355 bethisaac.org

REFORM/RENEWAL Congregation Shir Tikvah Troy (248) 649-4418 shirtikvah.org

Temple Beth Israel Bay City (989) 893-7811 tbi-mich.org Temple Beth Israel Jackson (517) 784-3862 tbijackson.org Temple B’nai Israel Kalamazoo (269) 342-9170 Templebnaiisrael.com Temple B’nai Israel Petosky (231) 547-0817 templebnaiisraelofpetosky.org Temple Emanuel Grand Rapids (616) 459-5976 grtemple.org Temple Emanu-El Oak Park (248) 967-4020 emanuel-mich.org

SECULAR/HUMANISTIC The Birmingham Temple Farmington Hills (248) 477-1410 birminghamtemple.com Jewish Parents Institute West Bloomfield (248) 661-1000 jccdet.org Sholem Aleichem Institute Lathrup Village (240 865-0117 secularsaimichigan.org SEPHARDIC Keter Torah Synagogue West Bloomfield (248) 681-3665 rabbisasson.wixsite.com/keter Ohr Hatorah Oak Park (248) 294-0613 Ohrhatorah.us

CONSERVATIVE Beth Israel Congregation (734) 665-9897 @BethIsraelCongregation ORTHODOX Ann Arbor Chabad House (734) 995-3276 jewmich.com Ann Arbor Orthodox Minyan annarborminyan.org RECONSTRUCTIONIST Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (734) 445-1910 aarecon.org REFORM Temple Beth Emeth (734) 665-4744 templebethemeth.org RENEWAL Pardes Hanah pardeshanah.org SECULAR HUMANISTIC Jewish Cultural Society (734) 975-9872 jewishculturalsociety.org Please email factual corrections or additional synagogues to list to: smanello@thejewishnews.com.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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business SPOTlight

brought to you in partnership with

BIRMIN GH A M

From a motivated basketball competitor to a mortgage industry giant.

DORON LEVIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

G

rowing up in Birmingham, Mat Ishbia made his mark as a standout on the Seaholm Maples high school basketball team from 1995 to 1998 — his scrappiness and grit more than compensating for his modest 5’9” height.

As an athletic kid from the suburbs with dim prospects of winning a Big 10 athletic schol-

COURTESY OF UWM

Mat Ishbia on the hardwood for MSU.

arship, Ishbia was nevertheless invited in his senior year of high school to work out with the Michigan State Spartans. The coaches noticed his unusual determination and offered him a non-scholarship membership on the team, a so-called “walk on.”

He practiced hard for four seasons, played scattered minutes in games that were already

decided, providing first-string players a rest. Yet he also participated in all four of State’s “Final Four” NCAA appearances — with rings to show for it — including the National Championship in 2000.

“At first, Coach Izzo didn’t really pay that much attention to me,’’ Ishbia told the Oakland Press in 2010. The apparent lack of attention “taught me about

“I HAD TO BUST MY TAIL JUST TO BE THE WORST PLAYER ON THE TEAM. I THINK COACH IZZO APPRECIATED THAT.” — MAT ISHBIA

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Mat Ishbia, whose United Wholesale Mortgage went public on Wall Street in January

what it means to work hard for something. He was personally responsible for putting me in that unbelievable situation. I mean, I had to bust my tail just to be the worst player on the team. I think he appreciated that.”

Striving to be a superlative bench-warmer imparted lifelong lessons. Coach Izzo “held me accountable to being the best version of myself.” Izzo didn’t expect Ishbia to dunk the ball after grabbing a rebound: “But if the ball is on the floor, I’m capable of diving for it.”

The head coach’s command of detail impressed him. “He’s deeply in the weeds of his business,” Ishbia said. “There’s nothing too small for Tom Izzo at Michigan State basketball, not even where the food is laid continued on page 38

APRIL 8 • 2021

COURTESY OF UWM

Mat Ishbia’s Hot Hand

From the Hill to the C-Suite

the real consequences of public policy decisions.”

Eric Feldman, Sen. Peters’ chief of staff, heads to Airbnb in new role.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

F

armington Hills native Eric Feldman has had a long and storied career in politics.

As chief of staff for Congressman and, later, Sen. Gary Peters, Eric Feldman spent 12 years overseeing operations in Washington, D.C., and Michigan. “It was a really incredible opportunity,” Feldman, 40, says.

Now based out of Chevy Chase, Md., he’s taking his career one step further in a new role with online rental marketplace Airbnb. He serves as the company’s head

of Federal and International Affairs. There, Feldman will help develop and implement Airbnb’s U.S. federal regulatory, legislative and public policy initiatives.

It’s a new direction for the legislative and federal affairs expert, who developed a love for politics early on while attending Farmington public schools. “I got interested in politics at a fairly young age,” he recalls. “My first political memory is the 1990 election, when I was 10.”

During that election, a millage for the school system nar-

Eric Feldman

rowly lost the vote, only to be replaced by a new one several years later. Seeing the experience unfold taught Feldman about the importance of organizing and not taking elections for granted, he says.

“Because that millage passed several years subsequently, my sister and I didn’t get those further investments in our high school,” Feldman recalls. “I saw

ENGROSSED IN POLITICS It inspired him to eventually switch his major at the University of Michigan from engineering to political science, as his passion for politics continued to grow. “I got so engrossed in politics that I wanted to pursue something that I was really passionate about,” Feldman explains. He strived to focus on American politics and began to get involved in planning events on campus.

While interning in Washington for former U.S. Sen. Carl Levin in the summer of 2000, Feldman inadvertently crossed paths with his future boss — Gary Peters — but he didn’t know it at the time.

Before joining Peters’ team, Feldman officially moved to D.C. in 2002 to take on his continued on page 39

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out for the kids to eat during recruiting visits.”

STRONG WORK ETHIC With a degree from MSU’s business school, the overachieving third-string point guard morphed over two decades into a feisty 41-year-old chairman and chief executive. The Bloomberg news service estimates his personal fortune at $9.42 billion, ranking him as the world’s 244th richest person. Yet he still credits Spartan basketball coach Tom Izzo, along with his father, lawyer Jeff Ishbia, as the mentors most responsible for his position today.

“My father always worked extremely hard when I was a kid,” he said. “He used to come and coach my games and then go back to the office, because there weren’t computers in those days. Like Izzo, he showed me that the guy who works the hardest has the best chance.”

One of his first athletic accomplishments was Ishbia’s selection for Detroit’s youth Maccabi team at the age of 13.

The Detroit Jewish News named him as the Jewish Athlete of the Year as a senior in high school.

These days, Ishbia hasn’t much time for basketball. He arrives at the headquarters of his company, United Wholesale

COURTESY OF UWM

MATT ISHBIA continued from page 36

COURTESY OF UWM

BUSINESS

LEFT: Ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange. RIGHT: Mat and his father, Jeff Ishbia.

Mortgage (UWM), in Pontiac by 4 or 4:30 a.m.; he remains at the office, he said, until 6 or 6:30 p.m.

“I’m competing with Rocket Mortgage, Dan Gilbert, Jamie Dimon from Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, these big guys,” he said. “We didn’t have as much money as them. We didn’t have as much access to things, but we have all 24 hours in a day, and if I can outwork them every day, I’m going to end up ahead. That’s what I’ve been doing for 18 years now, coming in and working three extra hours a day more than them. That adds up to a lot of hours of overtime.”

MOVE TO PONTIAC Ishbia acknowledges great affection for Metro Detroit and welcomes the responsibility of deploying his wealth on behalf of the community, especially where the need is greatest.

Finding UWM’s former headquarters in Troy “landlocked” and not able to expand, Ishbia chose Pontiac in 2018 “as a place we could grow into and make a positive impact.” In November, UWM paid $23.3 million to buy the 15.8-acre onetime Ultimate Soccer sports complex, part of which will be converted to workspace and the rest for youth sports activities.

“I love Pontiac,” Ishbia said of the city, which has been one of Michigan’s most economically troubled. “My mother was a teacher in Pontiac for 25 years.

I played basketball there. We’ll do some cool things with the sports center. We’re bringing activity to the city. I’ll do a school, a community center.

But our biggest impact will be to run a really great business.”

He noted that UWM hired 1,500 new employees since January.

Among his philanthropic activities was a $32 million donation in February to — surprise! — Michigan State athletics. The money will be used to upgrade football facilities and will include the renaming of the Breslin basketball arena for Tom Izzo.

Like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and many other billionaires, Ishbia knows that great riches come with societal expectations. “I’m newer to the game of making an impact,” said the single father of three children. “The things that are most core to me are kids, making an impact on children, and at the same time homelessness and people who are hungry.”

The pandemic hasn’t slowed UWM’s growth. While some employers point to a future mix of in-home and in-office work, Ishbia prefers keeping his team together as much as possible.

When directives from the state

Josh Linkner’s Big Little Breakthroughs will be on sale April 20. Linkner, founder and CEO of five tech companies, including Detroit Venture Partners, and a popular innovation speaker and author, shares his Eight Core Obsessions of Everyday Innovators.

A recent staff addition at Cherry Republic’s headquarters in Glen Arbor, Mich., is Leah Moskovitz, from West Bloomfield and a 2012 graduate of West Bloomfield High School.

Moskovitz is the Workgroups & Housing Supervisor. She earned her bachelor’s

here’s to Veteran journalist/ author Berl Falbaum’s new expanded book on Donald Trump has been published. Not One Normal Day: Trumpedia: A Tome of Lies, Scandals, Corruption and Much More is an important reference book for future generations who

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APRIL 8 • 2021

will have a difficult time understanding how Trump ever occupied the highest office in the land. Originally published in 2019, it has been updated to include his loss for reelection on Nov. 3, 2020, the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump’s acquittal of his second impeachment.

and safety precautions permit, Ishbia says employees who had been working from home will be returning. “Hey, we’ve got to follow the governor’s orders,” he said. “Most of the team is asking, begging to come back.”

STIFF COMPETITION Today, as the chief executive officer of UWM Holdings Corp. (ticker symbol UWMC), Ishbia is locked in a high-profile competition for top spot as the nation’s top mortgage lender. The current No. 1 is Detroitbased Rocket Companies Inc., also known as Quicken Loans, headed by Dan Gilbert, another Jewish kid from the suburbs who attended Michigan State.

United Wholesale Mortgage was originally known as Shore Mortgage, a 12-person company founded in 1986 by his dad.

It now employs 8,500.

In January, UWM emerged as a $16 billion publicly traded corporation via a merger with a SPAC — special purpose acquisition company — controlled by Alec Gores, brother of Detroit Piston owner Tom Gores. The innovative technique for converting companies to public ownership lately has seized the stock market’s imagination. It’s a financing method in which investors first buy shares of a so-called “blank check” company that afterward acquires its target — in this case, United Wholesale

degree from Central Michigan University in 2017, majoring in hospitality and minoring in business information systems.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has appointed Ryan Hertz, the president and CEO of Lighthouse, to the Michigan Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Hertz, a resident

Mortgage — the renamed company subsequently trading under the target’s name.

UWM and Rocket (ticker symbol RKT), both originate home loans, though their approach is different. Rocket, roughly three times the size of UWMC in terms of market capitalization, specializes in retail lending directly to those buying or refinancing a house; UWM focuses on mortgage brokers, who shop for mortgages on behalf of homebuyers.

“Now, things are a little more center stage because we’re Numbers 1 and 2,” Ishbia said.

Back in the day “they [Rocket] were No. 10 and we were No. 30, in terms of loan originations.”

As a relative newcomer to media scrutiny, the stock market and the responsibilities of being a billionaire, Ishbia appears to be enjoying himself and settling in comfortably.

He likely isn’t finished with athletics, though. When I asked him if he wouldn’t like to one day own a sports franchise, he replied: “I’m very blessed and lucky to have the means to be able to buy a sports team, which is always a dream. I wasn’t good enough to play for one, so maybe I should own one, right? One day will I look at doing that? Absolutely, I will.

“Basketball is obviously my passion, so that’d be my first one, but I love all sports.”

of Huntington Woods, joins a council designed to develop, adopt and update a decade-long plan to end homelessness in Michigan. The plan includes “evidence- based improvements to programs and policies that will ensure services and housing are provided in an efficient, cost-effective and productive manner,” the governor’s office said. Hertz became CEO of Lighthouse in January 2019.

FROM THE HILL continued from page 37

first official job in politics working for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

He started off as a research analyst for the committee, then worked for the U.S. House of Representatives as a legislative correspondent and research assistant. “Breaking in [to the field] can be difficult and takes a bit of luck,” Feldman says. “Once you break into the Hill, you have a lot of ability to succeed.”

This was the case for Feldman. He then returned

when Jewish community organizations were receiving bomb threats, including Jewish Community Centers, Feldman worked alongside Peters to secure support and physical security for the organizations. Growing up as a member of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, BBYO and University of Michigan Hillel, Feldman is proud of the help his team was able to provide for the local Jewish community.

Peters helped lead the Senate to a win that saw all

WORKING FOR SEN. PETERS “WAS A REALLY INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY.” — ERIC FELDMAN

to the committee, where he worked as a research coordinator before being promoted to senior research analyst and later deputy research director.

Serving in a leadership role in politics prepared him to take on his next job as Peters’ chief of staff, where he remained until this year.

His tenure with Peters marked a time in politics where monumental moments and changes occurred. “When Gary got elected to Congress, it was during the beginning of the Great Recession and the auto crisis,” Feldman recalls.

“It was amazing watching someone who had just gotten to Congress play such a significant role in helping to save the auto industry, and specifically helping to save Chrysler.”

PROTECTING JEWS One area of his work hit particularly close to home.

At the beginning of 2017

100 senators signing in favor of having all efforts possible from the federal government being used to investigate the threats against Jewish organizations, which in the first two months of 2017 alone saw at least 98 incidents.

Now, Feldman is looking forward to beginning a new chapter in life and continuing to influence positive change.

“Eric has extensive experience working with lawmakers and policy leaders on both sides of the aisle,” writes Laphonza Butler, Airbnb’s head of public policy in North America, in a press release. “He understands the complex policy issues that are critical to the success of our host community.

“We are proud to have Eric join our team as we continue to advocate the economic benefits of home sharing created for hosts and the communities they call home.”

APRIL 8 • 2021

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Chef Uri Scheft demonstrating the making of hamantashen at the Lehamim Bakery in Tel Aviv.

ARTS&LIFE DOCUMENTARY

Latke vs.

Hamantash

Film to explore debate on what is the more perfect Jewish food.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

75-year debate that began in 1946 is the subject of a new documentary being produced by a West Bloomfield native.

Filmmaker and producer Amy Krause, now based in Solana Beach, Calif., is in the midst of creating Latke vs. Hamantash, the movie.

The longstanding international debate that originated at the University of Chicago examines which is the more perfect Jewish food — the latke or the hamantash. It enlists the help of the world’s greatest minds, from political scientists to astrophysicists, to argue in favor of the food that best encompasses the Jewish story.

It’s not about flavor, but perfection, Krause says. Both the famous Chanukah potato pancake and the filled-pocket Purim cookie each represents Jewish life in different ways.

“There’s some very serious questions when you dig into it,” she explains of the debate, “like ‘Why is this funny?’ or ‘Why do

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Jews debate everything, including food?’”

Latke vs. Hamantash aims to answer these questions, among others, as it explores the history of the debate, its worldwide legacy and which hallmark food is, in fact, the more perfect Jewish food.

CHICAGO TRADITION The internationally renowned “Latke-Hamantash Debate” is held annually at the University of Chicago and draws thousands of attendees. Last year on Dec. 17, it was held online for the first time due to COVID-19 but continues to be the university’s longest-running tradition.

Krause learned about the debate through her oldest daughter, Sophie Needelman Bloch, and was fascinated by the story.

She needed to know more.

“I’m Jewish, but I didn’t have a deep religious background,” said Krause, who attended Birmingham Temple growing up.

“We were Humanistic Jews, so I felt that I was Jewish enough to handle the topic.”

At the University of Chicago with Bernie Weisberger, the oldest living debater

“IT’LL ADD A LITTLE LIGHTNESS AND REMEMBRANCE OF THE JOY OF OUR CULTURE. NOT JUST THE STRUGGLES OF OUR CULTURE.” — AMY KRAUSE

With American cookbook author Joan Nathan, who is displaying one of her books.

sity with ger, ving ater

IMDB

ARTS&LIFE CELEBRITY NEWS

NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

Amy Krause, center, and her production crew take a trip to Krakow, Poland, to see the debate for the first time.

She was also drawn to the humor behind the subject, which includes clever takes on whether the latke or hamantash is the more perfect Jewish food. “It was funny,” Krause said. “I didn’t see a lot of funny films at Jewish film festivals, so the idea really intrigued me.”

Krause began to research the debate, which is academic in nature, and connected with fellow debate enthusiast Benjamin Lorch, who now serves as an adviser and producer for the documentary.

The two partnered on the idea and officially began working on the film in the summer of 2018 after Krause attended the Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow.

Over the course of the next two years, Krause flew all over the world to gather information. From Philadelphia to Israel, she interviewed people about the debate and what lies at the heart of Jewish culture.

She spoke with rabbis, moderators, foodies and debaters — including the oldest living debater, 98-year-old Bernie Weisberger — about the legacy of the “Latke-Hamantash Debate.”

Throughout her journey,

Krause also found herself growing closer to Judaism, a personal accomplishment that she feels proud of. While Krause personally sides with the hamantash as the more perfect Jewish food, she’s heard sound debates on both ends in favor of the winning dish.

FILMING CONTINUES Though the pandemic has slowed film production, Krause continues to conduct interviews over Zoom and aims to complete filming at the end of this year, along with releasing the film soon after.

She also filmed a trailer in West Bloomfield in 2019 that previews the documentary and teases “the greatest Jewish debate in history.” It shows the intense academic rigor behind the subject, which has been dissected from every viewpoint imaginable.

Once the film is complete, Krause plans to exhibit it at Jewish film festivals and then introduce it to the rest of the world. “It’ll add a little lightness and remembrance of the joy of our culture,” she says of Latke vs. Hamantash. “Not just the struggles of our culture.”

THE WEDDING COACH, SHIVA BABY, HEMINGWAY’S JEWISH MATADOR FRIEND The Wedding Coach, a six-episode Netflix romantic reality series, began streaming April 7. The advance publicity says: Jamie Lee shares her irreverent yet practical tips and tricks for wedding planning with struggling lovebirds.

Lee, 38, has climbed the comedy ladder. She was a writer’s assistant (2010) to Jerry Seinfeld as he co-hosted the reality series Marriage Ref. In 2011, she finished second on the Last Comic Standing.

After, she did stand-up sets on many major talk shows.

She’s best known as a core cast member on the popular MTV series Girl Code (201315).

Two Jewish-themed movies opened in the last few weeks. Donny’s Bar Mitzvah, set in Michigan in the ’90s, got terrible reviews “everywhere” and isn’t worth your time. The opposite is true of Shiva Baby, which opened April 2 in some theaters and is now streaming (for a fee) on Amazon. It’s a comedy/ drama set at a family shivah gathering. Almost all critics have lauded the cast and praised first time director/ writer Emma Seligman, 26, a Toronto native.

The PBS documentary series Hemingway (about Ernest, of course) premiered on April 5. It is a six-hour, three-episode series that was shown over three nights this past week. It was co-directed

by Ken Burns (whose wife is Jewish) and Lynn Novick, 58.

If you missed the first airing, it

Jamie Lee

can be streamed on the PBS website. Michigan’s own Jeff Daniels provides the voice of Hemingway.

Before the series aired, I thought about writing about “Hemingway and the Jews.” No literary scholar disputes that he was, to some degree, antisemitic.

But I was quite sure that the Hemingway filmmakers would address that issue. You don’t win as many Emmys as Burns and Novick have won by ignoring the flaws of their biographical subjects.

Oddly, however, I got back to the subject of Hemingway while checking out the background of David Caro Levy, a “hot” Latin American Jewish actor. Levy’s father was possibly a bullfighter, and I flashed on Sidney Franklin (19031976), a Jew that Hemingway greatly admired.

Franklin was born in Brooklyn to Orthodox parents. Estranged from his police officer father, he went to Mexico as a teen and, almost on a dare, he studied bullfighting. He became a successful bullfighter in Mexico and Spain.

Franklin was funny and fluent in Yiddish as well as several Spanish dialects. He was friends with Hemingway and James Dean. He was also gay, a fact he barely concealed during his lifetime (See 2019 NY Times article, “The Gay Jewish Matador from Brooklyn”).

APRIL 8 • 2021

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ON THE GO

PEOPLE | PLACES | EVENTS

Cantor Gerald Cohen

ONLINE CONCERT 7:30 PM, APRIL 8 The Jewish Theological Seminary will present Cantor Gerald Cohen speaking about his composition Playing for our Lives, written as a tribute to the music and musicians of the Terezin concentration camp. The Cassatt String Quartet will perform.

Register at jtsa.edu/playingfor-our-lives.

RESEARCH CONFERENCE 9 AM-5 PM, APRIL 9 The Sterling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel in East Lansing will sponsor student presentations of Jewish studies-related research during several panels. Visit jsp.msu. edu/community-calendar.

PIRKEI AVOT 11 AM, APRIL 9 Adat Shalom Synagogue invites adults of all ages to join Rabbi Aaron Bergman for this weekly discussion of one of the most beloved and wise books of our people, which was written long ago but is even more relevant today. The community is welcome. Free. To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, contact Jodi Gross, jgross@ adatshlaom.org.

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SOULFUL YOGA 11 AM, APRIL 10 Adat Shalom Synagogue invites you to join Rabbi Aaron Bergman and yoga instructor Mindy Eisenberg for Soulful Yoga. Connect body and soul as they apply the wisdom of Torah to the gentle practice of yoga. No yoga experience is necessary. There is no charge, and the community is welcome. To RSVP and receive a Zoom link, contact Jodi Gross, jgross@ adatshlaom.org.

JEWISH & ISLAMIC/ MUSLIM STUDIES 10-11 AM, APRIL 11 “Islam, Judaism and Decoloniality” with Santiago Slabodsky and Sanober Umar will be a Zoom presentation brought by the University of Michigan Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. The speakers will reflect on how we can draw on Southern epistemologies to broaden the horizon of Jewish and Muslim studies. Advance registration required: lsa.umich.edu/ judaic.

ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY 4:30 - 5:00 PM, APRIL 10 Celebrate Israel’s Independence Day with your family and Temple Shir Shalom. on this Zoom gathering. This event is for families with kids ages 0 to 7 years old. Your bag has all the supplies you need and a few surprises. Register at shirshalom.org by April 8.

You may also call the office, 248-737-8700.

Judy Kuhn and Seth Rudetsky Julliard String Quartet

MUSICAL EVENING 8-9 PM, APRIL 10 The Chamber Music Society of Detroit will present an online event with the Julliard String Quartet.

Visit: cmdetroit.org.

LAKER CONCERT 5 PM, APRIL 11 Broadway is coming to Temple Israel: Four-time Tony Award nominee and Broadway veteran Judy Kuhn will perform with Seth Rudetsky, host of SiriusXM’s On Broadway

and consummate pianist.

Streaming live on YouTube, Facebook and Temple Israel’s website. For info: www.temple-israel.org/ event/onbroadway. Temple Israel is grateful to the Laker family for sponsoring this concert in loving memory of Sarah & Harry Laker.

CONTEMPORARY POETRY Noon- 1 pm, April 13 This Zoom webinar is presented by the University of Michigan Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. Poets Sheikha Hlewa and Yosefa Raz will read selections of their poems and translations in Arabic and English.

Required registration: lsa. umich.edu/judaic.

BUILD YOUR OWN BOARD 7 pm, April 13 Aviv Hadassah presents “Board Mama” Robin Plotkin. Register by April 11, hadassahmidwest.org/ AvivBoard. There is a $25 event fee. Learn the art of charcuterie board making with Robin Plotkin in this virtual class to create an appetizer board. Prior to class, she will provide a list to have on hand, so you’ll be ready to go. Info: email Hadassah Greater Detroit at greaterdetroit@hadassah.org or call 248-6835030.

VIRTUAL GALA 8 pm, April 11 “Reimagining Education in Israel” is the theme of the 2021 American Friends of Kidum Virtual Spring Gala, The event will provide a current look at the inno-

SPOTLIGHT

afrmc@afrmc.org or call 212-279-2522.

Noa

vative new solutions the Society for Advancement of Education is developing to meet the academic and social needs of teenagers from all segments of Israeli society.

Internationally renowned Israeli singer-songwriter Noa (Achinoam Nini) and Gil Dor will be performing.

All registrants will receive a special access link. Ticket prices start at $18 and all participants at the Friends ($36) level or above will receive a special Gala Party Pack in the mail before the event.

PEOPLE VS TECHNOLOGY 4 – 5 pm, April 14 The American Friends of Rabin Medical Center will present on Zoom Robert Siegel (former senior host of NPR’s All Things Considered for 31 years) as he interviews Prof. Sherry Turkle (MIT’s Social Studies of Science & Technology), Nicholas Carr (former executive editor, Harvard Review), Dr. Virginia Heffernan (Columnist, LA Times, The Economist & Wired), Register at globalconnections.splashthat. com. For information, email

FINDING BALANCE 7 pm, April 14 This Adat Shalom Synagogue spring threepart series will help you find balance during the Omer through meditation and gentle movement.

Free. To register and receive a Zoom link, contact Jodi Gross, jgross@ adatshlaom.org.

Officially Moved In Sy Manello, who’s been with the Jewish News for 33 years, had the honor of hanging the mezuzah on the doorpost at the JN’s new offices in Farmington Hills while reciting a traditional blessing in Hebrew.

Detroit Jewish News Foundation Chairman Gary Torgow and Special Advisor to the Board Mark Davidoff were on hand for the ceremony.

B’nai B’rith Donated COVID-19 Relief Kits

Cantor Matthew Austerklein

CANTORIAL INNOVATION 7:30 pm, April 15 The Jewish Theological Seminary will host this online event. 500 years ago, rabbis, cantors and Jewish musicians began to explore the spiritual possibilities of music. Cantor Matthew Austerklein will examine this era of cantorial innovation. He will examine the fiery critics of cantorial practice, emerging music theologians and experimental cantors alike.

Register at jtsa.edu/ cantors-controversycompassion-austerklein.

Leading up to Passover, B’nai B’rith community coordinators provided JVS Human Services and Yad Ezra Food Bank with COVID-19 relief kits containing a cloth face mask and travel-sized hand sanitizer, both imprinted with the B’nai B’rith logo as part of B’nai B’rith’s Project H.O.P.E., which aids vulnerable Jewish communities ahead of Passover each year.

“Our goal is to help those in our community who struggle with even the basic needs of life,” said Lila Zorn, president of B’nai B’rith Great Lakes Region.

“To be able to play a part in keeping them safe and

healthy with the COVID kits is an added goal for the Great Lakes Region.”

Zorn and Sid Roth, chairman of B’nai B’rith Great Lakes Region Project H.O.P.E., presented a check and the COVID-19 relief kits to Lea Luger, director of Yad Ezra.

Jeffrey Tackel, vice president of B’nai B’rith Great Lakes Region, presented kits to Melanie Gorman of JVS Human Services to be distributed to its clients.

These donations are some of many made as part of B’nai B’rith’s project to provide 3,000 COVID-19 relief kits to communities around the United States.

Compiled by Sy Manello/Editorial Assistant. Send items to calendar@ thejewishnews.com.

APRIL 8 • 2021

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ERETZ

Bridge Over International Waters BBYO connects Ethiopian Israeli and American teens.

A

n experimental program has made it possible for Detroit Jewish teens to personally share experiences with Ethiopian teens in Israel. The first participants in this new BBYO program report enormous success.

NITZAN’S STORY I am always amazed by how quickly teens connect to each other and how they form these connections in their own unique ways and develop friendships that often last a lifetime. After COVID-19 descended upon us last spring and forced everyone to shelter Nitzan at home, I decided to make Ben-Shaya lemonade out of COVID lemons and create a platform to enable these beautiful teen connections to form in a digital world.

BBYO joined together with the Ethiopian National Project (ENP), an organization in Israel that works to ensure the successful integration of Ethiopian Israelis into Israeli society, to launch a program called Bridges Buddies. The initiative is a Federationsupported ENP program that helps ENP participants improve their spoken English and allows American Jewish teens to learn about Ethiopian Jewish culture.

Without knowing how it would turn out, we arranged virtual meetings every other Sunday between Ethiopian Israeli teens and BBYO teens from the U.S., and created a partnership based on the Partnership2Gether twin cities in Israel: Migdal HaEmek-Detroit and AshkelonBaltimore.

The program enabled teens from different backgrounds to meet, laugh, learn and explore their cultures together in a very

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Ethiopian Israeli teens and Michigan teens joined in weekly Zoom calls.

natural way. Each meeting focused on a different topic and, during our sessions, we started out as one big group and then divided into smaller breakout rooms, which allowed conversations to evolve and become more personal.

As a leader in the group, I could have taught BBYO teens about Chanukah celebrations in Israel or about the alyiot (Jewish immigrants) from Ethiopia, but it was so much more personal for them to learn about it from an Israeli teen. And the same goes on the other side; I could have talked about celebrating Halloween and Thanksgiving to Israeli teens, but it was better for them to hear it firsthand from American teens who grew up with these holidays and traditions.

I chose to work with Ethiopian communities in Israel because I felt their stories and traditions needed to be heard, and I wanted to expose Jewish teens in the U.S. to this special community. Ethiopian Jews have a beautiful culture and traditions that show Israel in a very different way than most others.

This program truly brought light into my life and filled my Sundays with joy and hope. It demonstrated how teens can become friends and form connections through virtual spaces (in addition to reallife spaces), and I’m excited to share that we are starting three new cohorts of the program this spring!

DREW’S STORY As a teen participant in the ENP program from BBYO Michigan Region, I am fortunate to have experienced the power of this incredible program. I had an opportunity to learn about the culture of other teens, who are Jewish like me, but live halfway across the world and have very different traditions

than I do.

Despite a pandemic that has lasted more than a year, and thanks to the power of technology, I learned firsthand there are still opportunities to connect with others no matter where they live. The ENP program brought this to life.

I never could have imagined Drew Cohen meeting Ethiopian teens from Israel from the comfort of my own home.

One part of the program I especially enjoyed was the social interaction. During the week, it was hard to get out of my house as the COVID-19 numbers were getting worse in Michigan. However, on Sunday at 11, I knew I had the chance to be social at our weekly ENP program meetings.

Another part of the program I liked was learning about a different culture. I found it surprising how differently we do similar things such as celebrating Jewish holidays.

I am so thankful that Michigan Region was a part of the first test run of the ENP program. I hope other regions can participate in this even after the pandemic is over because it is not every day one gets the opportunity to create relationships with peers across the world in a “face-to-face setting” through a Zoom lens.

I learned a lot from the ENP program, and I am certain that anyone else who participates in future cohorts will, too.

Nitzan Ben-Shaya is the Washington, D.C.-based Maccabi World Union Shlichah at BBYO. To learn more about the Bridges Buddies program, contact her at nbenshaya@bbyo.org Drew Cohen lives in West Bloomfield and is a senior at Bloomfield Hills High School. He is a member of Fisher AZA and currently serves as the regional shaliach of BBYO Michigan Region.

WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE

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Immunotherapy has dramatically improved recovery rates from certain cancers, particularly malignant melanoma, but still work in only about 40 percent of the cases.

Future studies may establish which bacterial peptides enhance the immune response, enabling physicians to predict the success of immunotherapy and to tailor a personalized treatment accordingly.

“Our findings suggest that bacterial peptides presented on tumor cells can serve as potential targets for immunotherapy,” researcher Yardena Samuels said.

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COVID Funeral Reimbursement

Up to $9,000 for past expenses provided under new U.S. program.

DANNY SCHWARTZ STAFF WRITER

A

federal program is working through the state funeral associations to reimburse funeral costs for those who lost a loved one to COVID-19.

Under the CARES Act of 2021 and the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Congress David authorized FEMA Techner to provide financial assistance to individuals who incurred COVID-19related funeral expenses after Jan. 20, 2020.

Those who lost a loved one to COVID-19 can qualify for reimbursement of funeral expenses up to $9,000.

The Ira Kaufman Chapel is taking part in the program and, according to its funeral director, David Techner, letters corresponding to death certificates are being sent out with information on how individuals can receive this money.

Techner says he’s willing to help any family from the Jewish community with this process, whether Ira Kaufman handled arrangements for them or not.

“I give the COVID-relief people credit for convincing the government this was a worthwhile expense,” Techner said. “It’s a way of saying, ‘we’re really sorry for the pain caused by this.’”

FEMA issued its program policy, including details such as eligibility and documentation criteria and the application process for how funds will be

distributed to families.

FEMA will only award COVID-19 Funeral Assistance for a deceased individual on a single application. If multiple people contributed to funeral expenses, they need to register under a single application.

Applicants must have incurred the funeral expenses and applicants must be U.S. citizens, legal residents, asylees, refugees or non-citizen nationals.

Applicants must provide a copy of the certified death certificate, which must indicate the death “may have been caused by” or “was likely a result of ” COVID-19 or COVID-19-like symptoms. Similar phrases are also acceptable.

Applicants must also provide proof of funeral expenses incurred. Documentation (receipts, funeral home contract, etc.) must include the applicant’s name as the responsible person for the expense, the deceased individual’s name, the amount of funeral expenses and that funeral expenses were incurred after Jan. 20, 2020.

Eligible funeral expenses include transportation for up to two individuals to identify the deceased individual, transfer of remains, casket or urn, burial plot or cremation niche, marker or headstone, clergy or officiant services, arrangement of the funeral ceremony, use of funeral home equipment or staff, cremation or interment costs and any additional expenses mandated by local or state government laws or ordinances.

FRANK AISHISKIN, 86, of Oak Park, died March 28, 2021.

He is survived by many loving nieces, nephews, other relatives and good friends.

Mr. Aishiskin was the dear brother and brother-in-law of the late Ann and the late Tobi Goldoftas, the late Miriam and the late Sidney Rosen.

Contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice. A graveside service was held at Machpelah Cemetery in Ferndale.

Arrangements by Hebrew Memorial Chapel.

IRWIN S. ALPERN, 84, of West Bloomfield, died March 26, 2021.

Irwin loved his family deeply and enjoyed the accomplishments of his wife, children, grandchildren and friends. He was a dedicated certified public accountant and adviser to many for more than 60 years. He was a valued member of the Michigan Association of CPAs. Irwin was also an expert genealogist and was passionate about finding his own family history and assisting others in their searches. He always cheered his MSU Spartans. He was compassionate, caring and had a full-hearted desire to be of service to others.

Mr. Alpern was the beloved husband for 60 years of Barbara (Sorscher) Alpern, Ph.D.; cherished father of Bernard “BJ”

(Pyper) Alpern, Dr. Elizabeth (Dr. Michael Berkwits) Alpern and Marc Alpern; proud and loving zaydie of Hannah King, Samuel, Margaret and Charlotte Alpern, and Ava and Talia Berkwits; dear brother-in-law of Dr. Irving Sorscher; loving brother of the late Eugene Alpern; brother-in-law of Phyllis Alpern; devoted son of the late Philip and the late Blanche Alpern; son-in-law of the late Shirley Sorscher.

He is also survived by many other loving family and dear longtime friends.

Interment was at Clover Hill Park Cemetery.

Contributions may be made to Adat Shalom Synagogue, 29901 Middlebelt, Farmington Hills, MI 48334, adatshalom. org/tributes-make-adonation-in-honoror-in-memory; Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan, P.O. Box 251693, West Bloomfield, MI 48325, jgsmi. org; or Jewish Family Service, 6555 W. Maple Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48322, jfsdetroit. org. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

JOSEPH BRADLEY BECKER, 78, of Traverse City, Mich., passed away peacefully on March 27, 2021.

He was born in New York City on Nov. 8, 1942, to Julian and Estelle (Kuklin) Becker. He graduated from the Bronx High School of continued on page 48 APRIL 8 • 2021

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47

OBITUARIES

OF BLESSED MEMORY

A Zionist At Heart

A

aron Zelig Cutler, 96, of Ann Arbor, died March 25, 2021.

Aaron, known as Zel, was born in 1924 in Detroit. His parents, Sam and Ida Cutler, were part of a group of speakers and readers of Yiddish as well as the Zionist movement.

As a teen, he joined the newly formed group of Habonim, a Zionist youth movement that became the core of his future life. He helped to build Camp Kinneret, the Habonim summer camp, in Chelsea, Mich.

In the 1950s, the camp moved to a larger site in Three Rivers, Mich., and changed its name to Camp Tavor. All of Zel’s grandchildren attended the camp. Several of his great-grandchildren continue the tradition.

Habonim’s emphasis on aliyah, moving to Israel to build the new state, led Zel to his interest in agriculture. He got a job on a farm in Chelsea and worked there for a year until he was drafted into the U.S. Army. In September 1944, he was sent to Europe, where he was wounded by a shell in the Battle of the Bulge.

Zel was honorably discharged from the Army with a Purple Heart. Traveling to Creamridge, N.J., to visit his sister Basha, he discovered Hechalutz Farm, where North American Habonim members prepared themselves for life on kibbutzim in Israel. There Zel met his future wife, Simi Bernstein. They were married later that year and celebrated 73 years together until Simi’s death in 2019.

Zel again delayed aliyah to attend Michigan State University, where he earned a B.S. in animal husbandry and a master’s degree in chemistry.

Following the birth of Elana and Daniel, Zel needed to find work.

He found employment as a chemist

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APRIL 8 • 2021

in the automotive industry, becoming a specialist in zinc plating. Though Zel never realized his dream of aliyah, his sister, Basha, and her Aaron Cutler family eventually did.

Zel leaves a wonderful legacy of life filled with devotion to family, friends, Judaism, Israel and hard work. He is lovingly remembered working in his vegetable gardens, biking, ice fishing, cross country skiing and doing the Canadian Air Force exercises that were part of his devotion to health and fitness.

Heirloom tomato seeds from his garden are now grown in gardens across the country.

Mr. Cutler is honored and missed by his children, Eliana (Ron) Sussman and Daniel (Chris) Cutler; grandchildren, Mira (Doron) Sussman, Ari (Jaimie) Sussman, Eitan (Joanna) Sussman, Naomi (Grant Barton) Cutler Barton, and Sadie Cutler; great-grandchildren, Matan, Ishai, Judah SussmanYitzchaki, Sam, Anna and Lucy Sussman, Nava and Ilan Sussman, and Nora and Phoebe Barton; his nephew, Dani Shalev; niece Naomi Sharon.

Interment was in Beth Israel Memorial Gardens at Arborcrest Cemetery. Contributions may be made to Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County, 2245 S. State St., Suite 200, Ann Arbor, MI 48104, jfsannarbor.org; Beth Israel Congregation of Ann Arbor, 2000 Washtenaw, Ann Arbor, MI 48104, bethisrael-aa.org/~about/ donate; Hospice of Michigan, 43097 Woodward Ave., Bloomfield Hills, MI 48302, hom.org/donations; or to a charity of one’s choice.

Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chape1.

continued from page 47

Science and went on to earn his bachelor’s degree from the Baruch School of Business at the City College of New York in 1964.

Throughout his life, Joe was a charming, hard-working, proud and very determined man, who was also a softy at heart and who loved to provide his caretaking abilities and a listening ear to his family and friends. His favorite hobby was to enjoy the sun and the beach.

Left to remember his love are his cherished wife, Shelley Popa Becker; his children, Adam (Jodi) Becker and Nancy Becker Bennett, both of whom he could (and would) boast about for hours on end; his five adored grandchildren, Eric, Ryan and Ellory Becker, and Sloane and Shoshana Bennett. He is also survived by his former wife and lifelong friend, Ricki Becker; his sisters, Valerie (Joel) Frankel and Claudia (Pete) Morrow; members of the Popa family; many nieces, nephews, cousins and close friends.

Private arrangements are being handled by the Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home in Traverse City.

Contributions in memory of Joe may be made to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation at jdrf.org. Condolences and memories may be shared at reynolds-jonkhoff. com.

ROBERT “BOB” BERMAN, 65, of Orchard Lake, died March 26, 2021.

He is survived by his beloved wife, Dena Berman; son and daughter-in-law, Brandon and Natalie Berman; daughters and son-in-law, Lindsay (David Dagrosa) Berman and Lauren Berman; grandchildren, Ava, Preston, Leora and Lincoln; mother, Bernice Berman; brothers and sisters-in-law, Rick and Andrea Berman, Ron and Kim Berman, Ken and Britney Berman, Andrew and

Fabiola Berman; sisters-inlaw, Julie Roncato, Holly (Carl) Geyer; numerous other family members and countless friends.

Mr. Berman was son of the late John “Jimmy” Berman; brother-in-law of the late Marilyn Berman.

Interment took place at Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham.

Contributions may be made to the Gioblastoma Foundation, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation or the Fanny Strong Foundation.

Arrangements by Dorfman Chapel.

LORETTA BEVERLY BIRK, 84, of Henderson, Nev., and formerly of Farmington Hills, died March 25, 2021.

Loretta had a love for life which became apparent to everyone that met and knew her. Everyone instantly fell in love with Loretta’s kind heart and empathy for people and animals. She was incredibly perceptive and intelligent, honing that by being a voracious reader and a lover of puzzles and mah jong, which she played with her many friends. She always had a smile on her face and a kind word for all. She will be missed by all who knew her.

She was the beloved wife for 63 years of Dr. Allan Birk; the loving mother of Michael Birk and his life partner, Claudia Schmid, Neil Birk and his wife, Jessica Birk. She is also survived by her beloved

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OF BLESSED MEMORY continued from page 49

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OBITUARIES

RITA ELKEN, 97, of West Bloomfield, died March 17, 2021.

She is survived by her sons and daughterin-law, Irving Elken, and Stephen and Melissa Elken; grandchildren, Adam, Seth and Rachel Elken, Brett Elken, Lauren and Ryan Soria, and Lindsey and Mike Mack; greatgrandchildren, Madison, Lucas and Molly.

Mrs. Elken was the beloved wife of the late Morris Elken; the loving sister of the late Senta and the late Hy Shenkman; the dear stepsister of the late Elsie and the late Wilbert Simkowitz.

Interment was at Clover Hill Park Cemetery.

Contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

LINDA GURVITZ, 79, of Bloomfield Township, died March 25, 2021.

She is survived by her husband of 57 years, Allan Gurvitz; son and daughter-in-law, Eric and Lauren Gurvitz; daughter and son-in-law, Michelle and Adam Wichman; grandchildren, Jessica and Abby Gurvitz, and Sophia

and Gabriel Wichman; brother and sister-in-law, Allyn and Peggy Lite; sisterin-law, Carol Colman; many loving nieces and nephews.

Mrs. Gurvitz was the dear sister-in-law of the late Steven Colman.

Interment was at Adat Shalom Memorial Park. Contributions may be made to Temple Israel, 5725 Walnut Lake Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48323, temple-israel. org/tributes; Asthma and Alergy Foundation of America, 1235 S. St., #305, Arlington, VA 22202, aafa.org; or to a charity of one’s choice.

Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

MELVIN “MEL” HARRIS, of San Clemente, Calif., and West Bloomfield, died March 16, 2021.

He is survived by his loving and devoted wife, Michele Rosen; sister and brother-in-law, Hilda and Jeffrey Piell; brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Joy Harris; many loving nieces and nephews.

Mr. Harris was the beloved son of the late Sidney and Sara Harris; brother of the late Rosalyn and the late Michael Berke.

Interment was at Adat Shalom Memorial Park.

Contributions may be made to Tunnels to Towers Foundation, 2361 Hylan Blvd., Staten Island, NY 10306, tunnel2towers. org; or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis,

TN 38105, stjude.org.

Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

LESLIE ROGERS, 82, of Birmingham, died March 26, 2021.

She is survived by her husband c. 1999 of 64 years, S. Dennis Rogers; sons and daughters-in-law, Irving L. and Mong Rogers, and Darryl S. and Shari Rogers; grandchildren, Seth P. and Anna Rogers, Chase Dean Rogers and Ross Rogers; great-grandchildren, Steele Rogers and Slade Rogers.

Interment was at Clover Hill Park Cemetery.

Contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

HANNA UNGAR, 96, of Oak Park, died March 27, 2021.

She is survived by her son and daughter-in-law, Dr. David and Leah Ungar of Oak Park; daughters and sonsin-law, Sarah and David Wayntraub of Oak Park, Barbara and Leon Kalvaria of New York, N.Y.; numerous and loving grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren; many nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends.

Mrs. Ungar was the beloved wife of the late Alex Ungar.

Contributions may be made to Young Israel of Oak Park, 15140 W. 10 Mile Road, Oak Park, MI 48237; Yeshiva Beth Yehudah, P.O. Box 2044, Southfield, MI 48037; Yeshiva Gedolah, 24600 Greenfield Road, Oak Park, MI 48237; or Farber Hebrew Day School, 21100 W. 12 Mile Road, Southfield, MI 48076.

A graveside service was held at Nusach Hari Cemetery in Ferndale. Arrangements by Hebrew Memorial Chapel.

JEFFREY “JEFF” JOSEPH WACHLER, 93, passed away peacefully on

March 27, 2021.

Jeff was born on Aug. 4, 1927, to David and Elizabeth Wachler and raised in the Detroit area with his two brothers, Norman and Leonard. For many decades, he worked alongside his father and his brothers in the jewelry business. He was a veteran of the U.S. Navy.

At the time of his death, Jeff was surrounded by his four sons.

Mr. Wachler is survived by his loving partner of the past eight years, Sally Becker; sons and daughtersin-law, Link and Jody, Drew and Lori, Gary and Susan, and Glenn and Ellen. His legacy will be honored by his grandchildren, Eli, Grant, continued on page 52

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OBITUARIES

OF BLESSED MEMORY continued from page 51

Dan, Hannah and AJ, Dustin and Dalia, David, JJ, Erin, Emma; great-grandchildren, Silas and Asher Janosko, Lila and Andrew Wachler, Riley, Wyatt and Sawyer McClelland, and Jayden Wachler; beloved brother-inlaw and sister-in-law, Barry and Barbara Grant.

He was preceded in death by his devoted wife of 62 years, Eileene; and grandson, Jordan.

Interment was at Pine Lake Cemetery. Contributions may be made to Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, 24359 Northwestern Hwy., Suite 125, Southfield, MI 48075,

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jdrf.org; or a charity of one’s choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

BELLE WAULDRON, 97, of Southfield, died March 25, 2021.

She is survived by her daughters and son-in-law, Barbara Wauldron, Susan (Bruce Jerris) Wauldron Jerris; Bruce’s children, Allison (Rabbi Adam) Chalom, Michael Jerris; her greatgrandchildren, Maya Chalom and Jonah Chalom; many loving nieces, a nephew, other family members and friends.

Mrs. Wauldron was the beloved wife for 71 years of the late Norman S. Wauldron; daughter of the late Getzel and the late Ruth Grynbal Cohen; sister of the late Theresa (the late Isadore) Elias and the late Blanche Loosvelt.

Interment took place at Machpelah Cemetery in Ferndale.

Contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice.

Arrangements by Dorfman Chapel.

OBITUARY CHARGES The processing fee for obituaries is: $125 for up to 100 words; $1 per word thereafter. A photo counts as 15 words. There is no charge for a Holocaust survivor icon.

The JN reserves the right to edit wording to conform to its style considerations. For information, have your funeral director call the JN or you may call Sy Manello, editorial assistant, at (248) 351-5147 or email him at smanello@ thejewishnews.com.

RASKIN

MARIO’S FACEBOOK

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING

An Ode to Mario’s

T

hey were once dubbed the Massage Brothers by localite “Turk” Prujansky (Herman Prujan to his Hollywood friends) long before there were the Blues Brothers … But two other brothers gave up Danny their lunch busiRaskin Senior Columnist ness and one of them, Mario Lelli, other than breaking your back with his slapping ways, continued and settled things with some of the best steaks and Italian food in town.

It was not just a typically good Detroit restaurant … It was one of the best and deserved listing among the city’s top 10.

But working 18 hours a day was too much, so Mario and brother Nello gave up the lunch business … Although even more success came almost immedi-

Our State. Our Town.

Our Hospice.

ately.

The accent at Mario’s was Italian, but a very sophisticated and worldly Italian … His customers were getting away from ordinary Italian dishes as their palates became more sophisticated …

More and more called for Latin delights … Mario came out with a brochure telling his customers what they were getting.

He was no slouch as a cook and frequently took over the preparations of some of Mario’s very special dishes … He once told me that all the recipes were his own originals … that he stole them from somebody else and then added his own improvements and refinements.

Mario’s fine Italian hand was distinguished in the great minestrone soup, a meal in itself, the special antipasto, another meal in itself, the superb manicotti, etc.

Mario wasn’t kidding when he

said that all his beef was prime … his steaks were great … but his Italian food was even better!

That was back in the ’50s and Mario’s, now owned by Vince Passalacqua, is still doing terrific business as Mario’s at the same Second Boulevard, Detroit spot.

MAIL DEPT. … “I’m a lawyer and retired Wayne County Circuit judge. I especially love your column. I never made it to Echner’s, but was very fond of the London Chop House, Caucus Club, Pinkey’s, Little Harry’s, the Old Club, Carl’s, Mario’s, Larco’s, Lelli’s, Villa Venice, Joe Muer’s, the Gaslight, Victor Lim’s, Trader Vic’s, Brass Rail, Roma, Russell’s, Topinka’s and Cardinal’s for the best fettucine ever.” … Sharon Tevis Finch.

DON’T LOOK FOR the present avalanche of food-to-home delivery companies and offshoots of biggies like Kroger, Walmart, Whole Foods, etc., to give up the golden goose it has found … Many are making big money with it … But things may change

when restaurant dining opens up again full force … Numerous men and women will happily go back to their former jobs at eateries … Most restaurants can’t do without them … And in untold cases, people will be glad to do their own shopping everywhere themselves again … even to going distances without the present problems like groceries being left on porches, doorsteps, etc. … and, in some instances, even fences and garage lids … plus being stolen.

OLDIE BUT GOODIE QUICKIE …Two roaches were gorging themselves at a restaurant dumpster … One left to examine the dumpster of a new restaurant and returned extolling virtues about how clean it was … “Please,” said his buddy, “not while I’m eating!”

CONGRATS … To Lillian Halperman on her birthday.

Danny’s email address is dannyraskin2132@gmail.com.

The sooner you call, the more we can help.

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Looking Back

From the William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History accessible at www.djnfoundation.org

Trial of the Century

S

ixty years ago, Israel was the focal point for a world audience, not because of a war. In Jerusalem, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, began on April 11, 1961. The event was televised globally, and newspaper reporters were on location, including the legendary editor of the Detroit Jewish News, Philip Slomovitz.

Slomovitz spent weeks in Israel covering the Eichmann trial. The JN itself was not yet 20 years old in 1961, but by this time, Slomovitz was considered the dean of American Mike Smith English language newspaper Alene and Graham Landau editors. He believed it was his Archivist Chair duty to be at this trial. The William Davidson Digital Archive of Jewish Detroit History holds his reports from and editorials about the trial.

The Eichmann Trial was the most significant judicial action against a Nazi since the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1949. The Nuremberg Trials were conducted in the immediate aftermath of World War II (194549) by an ad hoc international military tribunal. It tried 197 German Nazi Party and military leaders who had been captured after the war. Nazis such as Hermann Goring, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer and others were tried and convicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Eichmann Trial was a different affair.

It resulted in another conviction of a leading Nazi, but it also raised global awareness of his role and that of other Nazis in the killing of more than 6 million Jews. More specifically, it was a key factor toward generic “crimes against humanity” becoming universally recognized as the Holocaust.

Eichmann escaped from Germany after its defeat in WWII. He settled in Argentina.

That nation usually did not honor extradition requests and was a safe haven for many of the fleeing Nazis. After living there incognito for many years, Eichmann was seized by Israeli Mossad agents and clandestinely spirited to

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Israel on May 20, 1960.

Eichmann was a key implementer of “The Final Solution.” He planned for the shipping of millions of Jews to death camps. This was a massive logistical problem, especially, in the last months of WWII, when Nazi Germany was crumbling. It was Eichmann who kept the trains running.

At the trial, Eichmann claimed he was “merely a little cog in the machinery.”

He admitted his role in transporting millions of Jews to death camps, but stated that he felt no guilt. He was just following orders, doing his duty, just doing his job. This is what philosopher Hannah Arendt termed the “banality of evil.”

Most important, the Eichmann Trial included the testimony of hundreds of witnesses, including survivors. These firsthand accounts of atrocities were a critical factor in raising public awareness of the enormity and magnitude of the Holocaust.

In this respect, see Slomovitz’s poignant report in the April 28, 1961, issue of the JN: “Witnesses’ Experiences Document Nazi Holocaust, Eichmann’s Guilt.”

Eichmann was found guilty and executed in 1961. He received the first and only death penalty in Israeli history.

The JN has covered some major world events over the years. And, from start to finish, through 1961 and 1962, Philip Slomovitz and the JN reported the Eichmann Trial. It is fascinating, albeit somber, reading about Israel’s “trial of the century.”

Want to learn more? Go to the DJN Foundation archives, available for free at www.djnfoundation.org.

THE DETROIT

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With Detroit’s help, Israeli firm creates app to give your car a smoother, more efficient ride.

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Todah Morim!

Thank you, teachers!

An appreciation of our day school educators during this pandemic.

See page 13

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