OUR COMMUNITY
Volunteers at the Madison Heights Food Pantry
Living Jewishly in the Heights
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spent the week before Rosh Hashanah in a bit of a funk,” says Madison Heights Mayor Roslyn Grafstein, who last August was appointed to the city’s top position. “I was missing my mom and my family a bit more than usual.” Her non-Jewish neighbors didn’t have any firsthand knowledge of Rosh Hashanah. Yet, they figured out a way to help Grafstein celebrate her Mayor most memorable Jewish New Roslyn Year. Grafstein Before COVID, Grafstein, a Toronto native, crossed the border frequently to visit loved ones in Canada. Last year, she planned to return for a birthday celebration, Rosh Hashanah and Chanukah. All three trips were canceled because, due to COVID, the borders closed for nonessential travel. Grafstein hasn’t seen her mom or her siblings since December 2019. “My neighbor asked me what I missed, other than my family; I told her it was the shofar and the songs,” Grafstein says. “She invited some of our non-Jewish neighbors to her house for a bonfire and an outside Rosh Hashanah celebration. She read the children a Rosh Hashanah book she found at the library. We ate cut apples drizzled in honey, listened to Avinu Malkeinu on her phone. Her daughter sounded the shofar from church. I have never celebrated in that way before, but I will never forget the feeling of welcome that I felt.”
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APRIL 15 • 2021
Madison Heights Jews are not so isolated as one might think. JENNIFER LOVY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Spanning seven square miles, Madison Heights borders Warren, Hazel Park, Royal Oak and Troy. With approximately 30,000 residents, the Jewish population is tiny, numbering only a couple hundred. “I don’t know many Jewish people are living here,” says Sean Fleming, a 49-yearold retired army veteran now working in telecommunications. He moved from Oak Park to Madison Heights in 1997. “It’s not a far-fetched idea. They just aren’t like ‘here I am.’” The Jews who call Madison Heights home say they love where they live for various reasons, including the city services, friendly neighbors and convenient location near I-75. Grafstein, 50, came to Michigan in 2004 because she “met a guy from Detroit.” That guy, Scott McGuire, is now her husband, and he purchased a house in Madison Heights a year before she left Toronto. “Madison Heights is not the bastion of the Jewish people — there aren’t a whole lot of us here, but my job is to represent everybody,” says Grafstein, who is most likely the city’s first Jewish mayor. Elected to city council in 2017, she was appointed mayor after her predecessor became a judge. “I’m probably not what most people think of when they hear of a foreign-born, non-Christian,” says the former Torontonian. When constituents hear their mayor is Jewish, they may be surprised
because of the low Jewish presence in the city, according to Grafstein. A 2018 Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit population study showed 221 Jewish households in Madison Heights, comprising just .7% of the city’s population. IMPACT NOT SMALL Amanda Stein, a clinical social worker, wife and mother of three, had an emergency food pantry up and running almost immediately after realizing the community would need assistance due to the financial strains of COVID. Stein thought of creating the food pantry last March, the same night schools across the state closed for in-person learning. During the first nine months of operation, it served an estimated 12,000 people, raised
Amanda Stein started the Food Pantry when the pandemic hit.
