DJN May 28, 2020 by The Detroit Jewish News

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www.mivoicecounts.org 200 May 28-June 30, 2020/ 5-11 Sivan 5780

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Cap & Gown

2020 See page 29

INSIDE Virtual Learning: 15 jewish@edu: 75 Health & Wellness: 88

J E F F & M AT T BA R K E R

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contents May 28-June 3, 2020/ 5-11 Sivan 5780| VOLUME CLVII, ISSUE 17

Shabbat & Holiday Lights

Shavuot: Thursday, May 28, 8:42 p.m. Shabbat starts: Friday, May 29, 8:43 p.m. Shabbat ends: Saturday, May 30, 9:54 p.m. * Times according to Yeshiva Beth Yehudah calendar.

On the cover:

Views

Challenges and Opportunity

Reading Between the Lines

5-10

22 New dean looks to enhance Wayne State Medical School.

78 Inter-collegiate book club tackles Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.

Filling the Gap

Online Support

23 Project Healthy Community expands distribution efforts in Northwest Detroit.

78 Two Jewish U-M students start Instagram account dedicated to supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis.

Cover photo: Special thanks to Glenn Triest, who shot this year’s Cap & Gown cover, and Julie Chernow (a.k.a. “Mother Sketcher”) for designing the custom 2020 face mask featured on the cover. You can find more of Glenn’s work at glenntriestphotographic.com and Chernow’s work at mothersketcher.com. Cover design: Michelle Sheridan

Jews in the D Canceled Plans and “Drive-in” Celebrations 12 High school seniors miss out on traditions but are hopeful the fall will bring new experiences.

Bagel Boys to the Rescue 14 Teen-run delivery service provides bagels, lox and fresh produce to community members while giving back to workers on the front lines.

Moments Moments 24

Spirit A Shavuot Revelation 25

A Whole New World: Virtual Learning During a Pandemic

Torah portion

15 Teachers face new challenges trying to educate their students from a distance.

Eretz

Book Drive 18 Groves student is collecting books for kids in Detroit.

An IDF ‘Lone Soldier’ Finds a New Home During COVID-19 27 Southfield native Ari Weiss was stuck on base for 45 days.

Cap & Gown Dealing with Dyslexia 19 Local teen shares his journey to overcome learning challenges.

The Greatest Generation 20 Special mailing will honor oldest Jewish Americans.

Camp Ramah Canada Closes for the Summer 21

thejewishnews.com

Cap & Gown 29

jewish@edu Leadership in the Time of COVID-19 76 Uncertain future leaves students planning for the fall one step at a time

Online Fellowship

Online Events 85

Remembering Survivors

Business

79 Students plan Virtual Yom HaShoah Community Reflection.

Business Not as Usual

Arts&Life

86 Small business owners adapt to doing business during a pandemic.

What’s in ‘A Written Testimony’?

Health

80 A Jewish conversation about rapper Jay Electronica’s controversial debut album.

88 Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute offers free short-term counseling.

Two Literature Professors Share ‘How Yiddish Changed America’

Michigan Healthcare Professionals Sets Up COVID Testing Site

82 Josh Lambert and Ilan Stavans about their own love of Yiddish and the challenge of putting the book together.

90 Out of the more than 6,000 tests they’ve conducted, about 20 percent have been positive.

‘Rewind’: Jewish Filmmaker Confronts His Traumatic Childhood

92 Blood drives held in hopes of helping COVID-19 patients.

84 A new documentary uses homevideo footage to help its director come to terms with his abuse, including at the hands of a prominent cantor.

Etc.

77 Detroit Center for Civil Discourse successfully moves online. Facebook @DetroitJewishNews

Celebrity Jews

T Twitter @JewishNewsDet

Helping the Helpers

Plasma Drive

The Exchange Soul Danny Raskin Looking Back

93 95 101 102

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Views for openers

Mom Guilt, Quarantine Edition

an I take a moment to talk about Mom Guilt? On a good day, moms have Mom Guilt. If we’re cooking, we feel bad we’re not playing with the kids. If we’re playing with the kids, we feel bad we’re not doing laundry. If we’re cleaning, we wonder if the kids are going to Rochel become responBurstyn sible human beings if we keep cleaning up after them, even though most of the time it’s just so much quicker and easier to clean ourselves. Enter COVID-19, and this Mom Guilt has crept up to a crazy new level. With kids home full time and getting a watered-down version of their education in pajamas with the use of technology, there’s always the worry: Am I doing enough? Will my kid

be on par with their classmates next year? And when did they change teaching long division the way I was taught in school? I can’t help them now! Then, when these moms want to get anything done — say, some work or even just a bathroom break — they might turn to technology for some electronic babysitting. And there’s that Mom Guilt again. What are those official recom-

mended screen time guidelines for kids? Since this pandemic began, my kids might have been getting what feels like 20 hours of screen time daily. Am I damaging them forever? Some moms have truly risen to the occasion. They spend happy hours creating original crafts and baking special treats with their cherubic children by their side. When they share their masterpieces, claiming,

“It’s so easy!” the moms I’m talking about picture the floury mess, the fingers superglued together, kids painting the walls when their back is turned, the glitter that will be ground into the carpet for the next decade and the fact that everyone will be asking her, “What’s for dinner?” even while she’s doing hands-on projects with the kids! The guilt rises again … She wonders: Am I the only one unwilling to do this? When kids later compare stories of life in quarantine, will my kids have anything positive to say? Am I missing a golden opportunity? And, if so, how come it doesn’t feel so golden right now? These moms love their kids, but their favorite part of the day is unquestionably bedtime. Finally, the kids are asleep and there’s quiet. She hadn’t managed to accomplish anything with her kids underfoot all day and, finally, now she can continued on page 6

essay

‘Not Giving Up’

hen I was 2½ years old, I was diagnosed with autism. I was nonverbal and self-abusive. My parents were told that I’d have to be put in a support home for the rest of my life. Two years ago, I graduated William Dash from Oakland University with a bachelor of arts in history and a minor in Judaic studies, cum laude. I’ve always felt that just

because someone is given a diagnosis, it does not mean they can’t go to college. I enrolled at Macomb Community College planning to earn a psychology degree. Instead, I decided to earn a history degree. When I was in pre-secondary school, my mom was my advocate. Now I had to be my own advocate for the first time, requesting special services such as sitting at the front of the class, recording lectures and taking tests in a quiet room. To receive services, I had to request letters from the disability office

and hand the letters to my professors. I would wait until the end of class to hand in the letters because I was really nervous approaching my professors. Navigating both campuses was a big challenge for me. In high school, all my classes were in one building. In college, I would have to go to multiple buildings for each class. MCC was big enough, but OU was like a small town. I would go to the campuses a week before classes started to figure out where each class was. Once I knew where all the buildings were, I didn’t do it as

often (unless I had to go to a new building). Since I don’t drive, getting to and from college was difficult. There were times when the ADA bus service made me want to scream, especially when I started Oakland. Whenever the bus was late, I would have a meltdown, but it was something I had to deal with. I preferred when I got to school early, so that I could get some work done at the library and decompress from the bus ride. The whole time I was in college, no one bullied me. When I continued on page 6 MAY 28 • 2020

Views Editor’s Note Mom Guilt from page 5

To Our Grads…

ongratulations on your graduation! We at the Jewish News are so proud of all your amazing accomplishments and the terrific ways each and every one of you have contributed to the Metro Detroit Jewish Andrew Lapin community. We are honored to feature you in our annual Cap & Gown issue, and we hope this can provide a small moment of pride in the absence of our community’s normal graduation festivities. Obviously, this is not the way any of you wanted this year to go down. Given the complete shutdown of everything caused by COVID-19, and the general state of the world you are graduating into, this probably feels less like a triumphant victory and more like barely stumbling across the finish line, only to find a sheer drop ahead of you. There’s no denying these are

difficult times. Most of you were planning to go to college in the fall and are now unsure if you’ll even be able to set foot on a campus by then. Others were planning to travel abroad, to Israel or elsewhere, and now you’re not sure if you can even get on a plane. That crucial threshold of life, the moment when you are able to leave the nest and put all your accomplishments and ambitions to use as you blaze your own trail through the world, has been put on potentially indefinite hold. Maybe your families have been forced to encounter the horrendous effects of COVID19 up front, either because someone close to you has contracted the illness, is a frontline worker doing their part to fight it off, or has had their jobs and livelihoods disrupted or shattered as a result. For many of us, this is not only a time of uncertainty and inconvenience, but also of real fear. But does any of this mean you’re less deserving of the

praise and promise that comes with every high school diploma? Absolutely not. And here’s the thing: In spite of everything, we can still live. And we can still live with our Jewish values intact. As you go forward in life, you will find opportunities to fulfill the lessons of our ancestors: of tikkun olam, of tzedakah, of chesed and kehillah. Finding new ways to repair the world, to give to the less fortunate, to build a community even in these current, terrible circumstances when our communities seem so fragile. No matter the unfortunate way in which it unfolds, a graduation is still an empowering event. You’re finding a path forward, and you’re doing it with the strong foundations our Jewish community has given you. Mazel tov and kol hakavod! May your journeys ahead bring you happiness, and may you help make the better world we all so desperately need.

catch up. But what should she do first? There’s so much to do: meal prep, dishes, laundry, check in on extended family, pay the bills, work, clean, check the news, change out of her pajamas, exercise, which she’s been promising herself she’ll do as soon as she has the time. The choice is overwhelming. The guilt is ever-present. So she does what any exhausted mom who puts her kids first all day does: Sinks into the couch, switches on something mindless and doesn’t move for the next few hours. She’ll try to convince herself to go to bed at regular intervals, but it’s just so nice and quiet now. No one is fighting, complaining or calling “Moooommy!” The loudest thing is the Mom Guilt, ever-present, which she’s trying to drown out with sips of wine and desperate proclamations of “I need this me time!” And it’s true, she does. I keep thinking if normal life earns us regular hardworking moms one celebrated Mother’s Day per year, this pandemic has got to be earning us at least a three-year vacation … whether we tackled the crafts or not.

Not Giving Up from page 5

did tell people about my disabilities, no one put me down. Whenever we had to meet outside for group projects, and I told my group I didn’t drive, they were accommodating. I had one group tell me I could FaceTime into the meeting. My last semester at Oakland, when I took four classes, was definitely the hardest. I remember one day when I was typing up notes for an exam the next day, I suddenly broke down crying because I felt I wouldn’t be ready. But when I passed my classes, I could breathe again. About a week before gradu-

6 |

MAY 28 • 2020

“I’ve always felt that just because someone is given a diagnosis, it does not mean they can’t go to college.” ation, I was able to take a tour where the ceremony would take place with a coordinator. She told me what to expect during graduation. On graduation night I was more excited than anxious, even when the bagpipes played loudly right next to me. I’d have to say it went a lot smoother than my graduation at

MCC, where I forgot my name card in the waiting area and had to go back for it (making me last but not least in getting my degree). Now out of college, I face one of the hardest challenges of my life — finding work. One of my professors told me there weren’t many college teaching positions.

He also mentioned how some previous history students work in the writing industry because they had to write so many papers. I really liked writing papers for classes, so I decided I’d try to look for work either writing, editing or proofreading. So far nothing has come to fruition. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because I have autism or because of my lack of experience. Either way, I’m not giving up. William Dash is a writer who lives in Clinton Township. He’s a member of Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township.

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Views essay

Why I’m Sticking with World ORT

have been privileged to be involved in Jewish communal life since the early 1960s. I am also fortunate to have lots of choices in life. I could, for example, spend a lot more time reading my volume on Churchill rather than thinking about what is on the agenda for our next Board of Trustees meeting. So why am I signing up for a second four-year term as president of World ORT, Dr. Conrad Giles the global education network driven by Jewish values? Partly because this has been a remarkable period in the history of our organization — due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And also because as I reflect on the challenges of my first term and acknowledge that there have been many, I see that we have met them. We will continue to meet them, even though the future has a rather fuzzy look to it right now. ORT reaches more than 300,000 beneficiaries in over 30 countries every year. Our teachers are leading classes every day for students in countries as diverse as Mexico and Kyrgyzstan, Latvia and South Africa. For 140 years since its foundation in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1880, ORT has transformed lives through training and education. While we once focused on teaching 19th-century Russian Jews essential trades like tailoring or ironmongery, we have evolved to provide 21st century skills in STEM subjects and innovative fields such as Arthur M. Horwitz Publisher ahorwitz@renmedia.us F. Kevin Browett Chief Operating Officer kbrowett@renmedia.us | Editorial Editor: Andrew Lapin alapin@thejewishnews.com Associate Editor: Jackie Headapohl jheadapohl@renmedia.us Social Media and Digital Producer: Nathan Vicar nvicar@renmedia.us Multimedia Reporter: Corrie Colf ccolf@renmedia.us

robotics and artificial intelligence. Using ground-breaking technology is second nature to us. This pandemic’s demand that learning take place off-site gave ORT schools a headstart in March. Our teachers and principals were able to quickly adapt their curriculum to ensure every student could continue their education from home as soon as possible when lockdowns were enforced. In the future, we will be able to expand this level of expertise, but as great a challenge as any over the next four years will be our ability to grow our resources to support our activities globally. ORT’s funding comes in large part from individuals living in the United States, Canada, the UK and Switzerland. Quite simply, despite the public support currently available, we would not be able to function without these supporters. The education provided by ORT schools is exceptional. It changes lives. On a trip to one of our high schools in Kiev, Ukraine, I met a 17-year-old girl. I always ask our students, “What are you going to do in life?” This girl knew she was going to get a law degree from Colombia University. Neither of her parents had gone to school, but she was already talking about her future. All of us have dreams; seldom are all those dreams achieved. But ORT gives youngsters an opportunity to dream — and hopes that could never have existed in their lives because of when and where they were born. I was always taught the importance of lifelong study. In giving back, I want to help

Editorial Assistant: Sy Manello smanello@renmedia.us Senior Columnist: Danny Raskin dannyraskin2132@gmail.com Contributing Editor: Robert Sklar rsklar@renmedia.us Contributing Editor: David Sachs Editorial Intern: Yael Eichhorn yeichhorn@renmedia.us Contributing Writers: Nate Bloom, Rochel Burstyn, Shari S. Cohen, Andrew Field, Maya Goldman, Barbara Lewis, Danny Sschwartz, Reisa Shanaman, Mike Smith

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MAY 28 • 2020

TOP: ORT students in Kiev learn with LEGOs. BOTTOM: A mock Sabbath dinner for ORT children in Kiev.

others have the chance to achieve the kind of educational success that World ORT and its affiliates such as ORT America provide. Why am I still doing this? Because the great joy of leading ORT is the opportunity to observe youngsters around the world in their learning environment, to see their test results which reflect outstanding professional support, and to interact with the many dedicated professionals and teachers who fill the educational environments where these youngsters are learning. Dr. Conrad Giles is the president of World ORT. He was re-elected to a second term at the organization’s General Assembly on May 24. A leading pediatric ophthalmologist, he is chief emeritus of ophthalmology at Children’s Hospital of Michigan.

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MAY 28 • 2020

Caught in a Shakespearean drama I dutifully wash my hands And wash my hands again and again and again and again. Singing Happy Birthday even once seems out of sync with the task. I count to 20 instead. And I wash my hands again and again and again attacking those nasty covids more than 20 times a day. Out, damn spot! Then a wise woman says she recites the Shema. Hmmm, I think, as a ripple stirs in my heart. How would that change the task? Something resonates. So I try it the next time I wash my hands. “Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad,” I intone as the suds bubble on my fingers, my nails my palms.

My mood shifts. My being lightens. My heart opens. A discovery! Washing my hands is a prayer. It is a meditation. It is a connection to the Eternal One, a connection to all Souls everywhere as we all wash our hands as One. Shema is the call: Listen up, all you who question and struggle to understand the dualities of Life. Know that opposites live together as One. Darkness and Light, Life and Death, Sickness and Wellness are One. We are each One. We are all One together. We are all in this struggle together, and we are stronger for it. Even if apart, we will get through this together as One, with love and compassion and hope and the Universal Prayer of Washing our Hands.

Elaine Adler is a poet from Lexington, Mass. She was a member of Temple Israel’s 1954 confirmation class.

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| 29

Jews in the D

Graduation Without Celebration High school seniors miss out on traditions but are hopeful the fall will bring new experiences. MAYA GOLDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

his year’s high school seniors thought they’d be walking across a stage to receive their diplomas next month. They thought they’d be able to dress up for prom and attend senior all-night parties and win Water Wars competitions. Instead, like the rest of us, they’re staying home. “To be honest, it’s pretty disappointing,” said Sam Shienbaum, a senior at Groves High School. “My whole class has just been looking forward to this exact moment their whole lives. It’s something that you want to cherish.” The loss of the celebration hit hard for Olivia Feldman, a senior at Frankel Jewish Academy. “For me, high school was really stressful, and I overcame a lot of challenges,” she said. “And I think graduation and completing high school is really something I was looking forward to doing in person.” FJA’s small senior class agreed they wanted to wait until they could meet in person to celebrate graduation and prom, even if that means holding the events late this summer or next fall. But other FJA events, like the annual senior class trip to Israel and Poland, can’t be postponed or replicated online. Emily Feldman, who also attends FJA and is not related to

Sam Shienbaum

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Olivia Feldman

Olivia Feldman, decided not to go on last year’s Teen Mission to Israel because she knew the senior trip was coming up this year. “That definitely was something I was looking forward to throughout high school,” she said. “I made a conscious decision to forgo a recreational experience to do this meaningful experience, so that’s really sad.” Jake Fogel, a senior at Bloomfield Hills High School, said his large public school plans to hold a “drive-in” graduation, where seniors can come to the school’s parking lot and watch a slideshow presented on large projector screens. “The reception has been pretty good,” he said. “People are excited to have something — a lot of us were either expecting nothing or to have something a lot later.” Fogel, who plans to attend the University of Michigan in the fall, said he thinks the online format “is going to be interesting.” He isn’t sure how placement tests and other activities will be conducted yet. High school ceremonies aren’t the only thing the class of 2020 will miss out on. Emily Feldman was supposed to work at Tamarack Camps this summer, but the organization canceled this year’s programs. She’s trying to stay positive. Still, she said, “I planned these few months of my life and looked forward to them for so long and to have none of that happening — it’s tough.” College orientations, usually held in person on campuses over

“The vast majority of people in my grade have been really hopeful and positive… [it] kind of builds that community which maybe we didn’t have as much of in high school.” — JAKE FOGEL

Emily Feldman

the summer, are also being conducted virtually this year. And although several universities have committed to holding in-person classes in the fall, many schools — including the University of Michigan and Michigan State University — have not made any official decisions on whether they’ll let students come back to campus. Fogel is hoping he’ll be able to start college at U-M in September as planned, but he’s heard of people who are considering switching to a school closer to home or taking classes at community college because of the uncertainty of the pandemic. Shienbaum will attend West Point military academy in the fall and play on the school’s football team. He’s supposed to start basic training in New York on July 13, and he hasn’t heard any instruc-

“I planned these few months of my life and looked forward to them for so long and to have none of that happening — it’s tough.”

“I really just needed a year after high school to explore my identity and myself before stepping into the academic world and realizing what I really wanted to do,” she said. The program she chose, called Hevruta, brings Israeli and American students together. The American students in this year’s class were sent home, and Olivia Feldman worries next year’s program might be canceled altogether. No decisions have been made yet, but she’s hoping American students will just be asked to quarantine for two weeks upon arriving in Israel in September. Despite all the uncertainty, the class of 2020 is staying hopeful. Fogel said it’s helped his grade come together in new ways. “The vast majority of people in my grade have been really hopeful and positive… [it] kind of builds that community which maybe we didn’t have as much of in high school,” he said. Above all, this year’s graduates feel that while it’s upsetting to lose the end of their senior year, there’s still a lot to be grateful for. “I’m still living life like I have a big future ahead of me and hopefully this is just a blip on the radar,” Emily Feldman said. “And while it is really difficult and challenging, and these experiences are real, I’m just lucky to be healthy and safe.” Jake Fogel

— EMILY FELDMAN tions to do otherwise yet. “To be honest, I think that I will have the opportunity to go to New York soon and go to college,” he said. “I’ve just been worried because obviously nobody wants online [learning], but it might be the norm. I hope everybody gets to go, and I hope it’s safe.” Olivia Feldman plans on taking a gap year in Israel after graduation. She’s been looking forward to the opportunity for a long time.

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Jews in the D

Bagel Boys To The Rescue Teen-run delivery service provides bagels, lox and fresh produce to community members while giving back to workers on the front lines. CORRIE COLF STAFF WRITER

n early January, tragedy struck the local bagel scene when The Bagel Factory Cafe closed its Birmingham location. Three Birmingham teens decided then to create a delivery service to help satisfy the bagel cravings of those throughout the surrounding area. Thus began Bagel Boys Delivery Service. Temple Israel members Ethan Marcus, 16, and his brother Mason, 13, started the company with their friend Jonathan Cloutier, 16, by partnering with The Bagel Factory’s location in Southfield to bring bagels to those who used to go to the Birmingham location. The Bagel Factory located in Southfield is strictly for ordering takeout. Previously, the location in Southfield, The Bagel Factory Cafe in Troy and the location formally in Birmingham were all under the same management. The management then decided to sell the Troy and Birmingham location before the Birmingham store closed. The location in Troy and Birmingham have “cafe” added to the end simply because they offer seating for those who would like to sit and enjoy

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their bagel. tomers but continued to watch The boys began by fulfilling their delivery numbers increase. orders for some of their family They wound up with 260 delivmembers to ensure they were eries to make on Sunday, May up for the task. After the trial 10: Mother’s Day, the ultimate run was complete, they built bagel-brunch holiday. their own website, created order The Bagel Boys currently forms and were open for busimake deliveries to Birmingham, ness. Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms, Now, faced with the challeng- Franklin, Bloomfield Township, es of the coronavirus pandemic Bloomfield Hills, West impacting businesses around Bloomfield, Farmington Hills the area, the boys pushed forand Royal Oak. ward with Orders can their business be placed to make sure through their that members website and of the commust be community who plete before wanted bagels Saturday at 1 could still p.m. so they support a local can ensure business withdelivery on out leaving Sunday. If the — JONATHAN CLOUTIER their homes. order is placed “On every after the cutoff delivery, we wear gloves. We time, the delivery will simply don’t wear masks on the delivtake place the following Sunday. ery, only when we enter the Customers have a choice bagel factory, simply because we from over 28 different bagel fladon’t come in contact with peo- vors and a multitude of different ple when we make a delivery,” types and sizes of cream cheese. Ethan said. “We text them to let The boys now also offer sliced them know their order has been nova lox from Acme Smoked delivered.” Fish, and customers can also Their business has experihave either a fruit box or veggie enced exponential growth. They box delivered from Leonardo’s started off with just six cusProduce in Detroit.

“We wanted to give back to our community on the front lines.”

“Our goal as a company right now is to help limit the amount of people who need to go to the stores right now,” Jonathan said. “We want to help give them the food they need without having to leave the house so often.” Since the beginning of the pandemic, the boys decided to donate 10% of their portions to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. They have also delivered hundreds of bagels to the staff at the hospital, courtesy of members of the community who placed those orders. “Once the COVID pandemic started, we wanted to give back to our community who was fighting on the front lines,” Jonathan said. “We just sent them a donation of $1,130.37 and approximately four weeks ago we made a donation of $209.” While it may be cheesy, there is no denying that the Bagel Boys Delivery Service has been a hole-in-one for the local community and to those working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you or someone you know would like to purchase an order of bagels, you can head to http://bagelboysdeliveryservice.com for more information.

Jews in the D

A Whole New World:

Virtual Learning During a Pandemic Teachers face new challenges trying to educate their students from a distance. CORRIE COLF STAFF WRITER

efore the coronavirus pandemic, classrooms were filled with students and teachers, hallways were a place to see friends and catch up on the latest gossip, and gyms were filled with athletes and families cheering them on. Now, everything has moved online, and classrooms are now in kitchens, bedrooms and office spaces in students’ homes. Technology glitches are inevitable and are now common occurrences for some classes. Amy Stein, a Jewish studies teacher at Farber

Amy Stein

Hebrew Day School, was bringing her students back from a Zoom breakout group session when everyone’s videos had frozen. Luckily, the sound was still there. Stein continued with the lesson and slowly, one by one, each student’s video began to come back. Teachers have also had to encourage engagement from students through discussions by calling on them individually to discuss homework assignments or in-class exercises. Stein, for example, has her students mute themselves and use the chat box function on Zoom so no one begins to talk over one another. Talking over one another is hard enough in the classroom, but in a virtual setting, the result is deafening silence due to Zoom’s settings automatically muting crosstalk. It has now been over two months since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer closed schools throughout Michigan due to

COVID-19. On April 2, districts were tasked with developing individualized plans for their teachers and students to engage in distance learning. Many students, especially seniors, are still struggling with the notion of not being in the classroom and celebrating the end of their high school careers with proms and graduation. Zoom classrooms, Google Hangouts and recorded lesson plans have become the new “norm” for students and teachers. Sitting at home, staring at a screen all day is difficult and strange, but still allows for students to feel a sense of togetherness while being apart from one another. However, teachers from local schools around Oakland County have risen to the challenge and are trying to overcome obstacles to engage with their students as much as they can through this new virtual age.

FRANKEL JEWISH ACADEMY At Frankel Jewish Academy in West Bloomfield, teachers have been using Google Hangouts to engage with their students. Rebecca Strobehn, a ninth grade Jewish studies teacher, has been a teacher at FJA for three years. Although she is proud of her students’ resilience, nothing can compare to seeing her students face-toface on a daily basis. “The part of teaching I love most is the daily interactions with my students, both formal and informal. In our current online learning structure, we have limited face-to-face time with our students and such limited opportunities for just being together without the pressures of a lesson plan,” Strobehn said. “Even as someone who has grown up in the digital age, I have always processed in-person interactions differently from digital ones. It’s just not the same seeing and talking to my students on a screen.”

“It’s just not the same seeing and talking to my students on a screen.” — AMY STEIN Strobehn has also changed her approach to teaching during this time. She tries to make time during each lesson to check in with her students and find out how they’re doing outside of academics. In a few of her classes, she has struccontinued on page 16 MAY 28 • 2020

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Jews in the D continued from page 14

Bosmat Dovas

tured projects to require oneon-one video chats with students to allow more individual attention. Bosmat Dovas, a Hebrew teacher at FJA, has transformed her coursework due to the shift to virtual learning. Testing and assessments have been the most difficult and challenging obstacles for Dovas during this time. “The most difficult thing for me as a foreign language teacher is that we rely on conversations that are heavily based on interaction … I have been encouraging them and providing them with more homework and less assessments because I fear that they will either use Google Translate or ask others for the answers,” Dovas said. “I now give them personal assignments so they can’t copy off one another and talk to them about the honor system.” Dovas continues to remind her students that this is a learning experience for everyone. While this may be a tough time, she remains positive for her students and brings a new sense of creativity to her classroom, especially through games. FARBER HEBREW DAY SCHOOL Teachers from Farber Hebrew Day School in Southfield have

used Zoom and its features to reach their students. Zoom allows for the teachers to use the “shared screen” so students can share their work, but also allows for small group work through their “breakout rooms.” Nachshon Wyma, a robotics teacher at Farber, had to completely redesign his class. Normally, the class involves electronics, microprocessors, 3D printing and designing, and building robots. Since the transition to virtual, they have pivoted the focus to coding only.

when all is said and done.” BERKLEY HIGH SCHOOL Berkley High School teacher Natalie Ford currently teaches 11th grade English and AP literature and composition. She has been using Google Classroom to communicate and post assignments and the screen recorder software Screencastify to record short, instructional videos and feedback on assignment. She has also begun making her own podcasts for longer discussions to talk her students through their reading assignments.

“The basic structure of our culture has changed, and we need to acknowledge that, but we’ll get through this together and be stronger for it when all is said and done.” — NACHSHON WYMA The “share screen” option on Zoom allows for the students to share their designs with Wyma and his volunteer robotics mentor, Ben Forta, and also enables the instructors to help students overcome difficulties by pointing out where something might be going wrong in their code. “We are trying to maintain the normalcy of education in a sea of uncertainty and change — and this can be a positive point of familiarity,” Wyma said. “The basic structure of our culture has changed, and we need to acknowledge that, but we’ll get through this together and be stronger for it

Ford also uses Google Meet to host her office hours once a week. “I think the biggest thing has been trying to maintain a connection with students,” Ford said. “This is new for all of us so my strategy has been to at least once a week post a journal assignment where students can be themselves and write like a teenager. They can communicate with me what is going on in their world.” Ford also takes the time to respond to all her students’ journal entries and mimic having a conversation with them. Her goal is to take the time to make sure her students are not

only understanding assignments, but also doing OK in general. “What I have gathered from their journal entries is that this time away has allowed them to understand themselves as learners a little more,” Ford said. “No one is forcing them to do the work, so they have to truly figure out who they are. One student told me she used to feel rushed in class and now she has learned that she can do more work when she goes at her own pace.” Ford’s students have told her that they have noticed they have to place their phones in different rooms to ensure they are not distracted by them. Other students have also begun journaling, finding other routines that work for them. In Ford’s AP literature and composition class, her students were still able to take the AP exam online. The exams have all been adapted in some way — Ford’s exam only had one essay question, and she gave students 45 minutes to answer the question. Students can also choose to receive a full refund on their money if they don’t want to take the online AP exam. “I have been telling my students since this began that every emotion is allowed. Early on, especially the seniors, many of them were writing about how disappointed they were surrounding everything,” Ford said. “I just remind them that whatever you’re feeling is what everyone else is feeling. You have to move through all the emotions. We may all be apart from one another right now, but we are still doing this all together.” continued on page 18

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Cooper Schoenberg with some of the books he’s collected.

COURTESY OF CATALYST MEDIA FACTORY

Jews in the D

continued from page 16

Book Drive Groves student is collecting books for kids in Detroit. JACKIE HEADAPOHL ASSOCIATE EDITOR

ooper Schoenberg, 15, has been a volunteer with Detroit’s Northwest Activity Center for three years. “I’d go there once a week to help kids with their homework, with reading and other extra learning activities,” said the rising junior at Groves High School in Birmingham. While there, he learned how important it was for kids to have access to books. He was inspired to take action. Schoenberg, also a member of the Jewish Fund Teen Board, is spearheading a book drive to benefit Brilliant Detroit, which offers a new approach to kindergarten readiness and a unique delivery model for early childhood development in Detroit. Brilliant Detroit creates early child and family centers in neighborhoods homes, providing year-round programming and services for children up to age 8. “With schools and libraries currently closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have been cut off from access to books,” Schoenberg said. “My goal is to get books into the homes of as many families served by Brilliant Detroit as possible so children can keep up their reading skills during the summer months.” Schoenberg is accepting donations of new and gently used books for infants on up to 8-year-olds. “Everything from picture books to easy chapter

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books,” he said. This isn’t his first book drive. For his Temple Israel bar mitzvah project, he hosted a book drive to benefit Beyond Basics, another literacy-focused nonprofit. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, he lets donated books sit for five days before he prepares them for delivery and another five days before shipping them to Brilliant Detroit. This is his first partnership with the group. “We are grateful to Cooper for his invaluable assistance with our organization, especially during this time,” said Cindy Eggleton, co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Detroit. Eggleton hopes that his book drive will offer a new, wide array of books and stories for the children of the Brilliant Detroit families. Schoenberg lives in Birmingham with his parents, Karen and Jeff, and two younger twin sisters. He likes reading and just finished the classic Catcher in the Rye. He said he’s looking forward to collecting books and the end of the stayat-home order so he can once again hang out with his friends. Schoenberg is accepting drop-offs and offering to do pick-ups of books. Email him at cschoenberg123@gmail.com or direct message the Instagram page set up for the book drive @detroit_book_drive to make arrangements.

HILLEL DAY SCHOOL The teachers in grades K-4 at Hillel Day School of Farmington Hills use an asynchronized model, which means they record lessons of themselves and post them online for students to watch on their own time using a platform called Seesaw. They also hold class meetings on Monday mornings through Zoom. Elizabeth Emmer, K-4 math curriculum coordinator and 1-2 grades general studies teacher, records her lessons two or three times a week and

if something doesn’t get done on time because they know that every family has different schedules, and they don’t want to add more stress to families during this time. “We are trying to push out the best teaching and learning that we can get at this time because, obviously, it is a lot different than being in the classroom, but we don’t want that to get in our way,” Emmer said. “We miss our students, but we are so proud of them and all the work they are doing at home. We know it is challenging, but we con-

“We miss our students, but we are so proud of them and all the work they are doing at home.” — ELIZABETH EMMER then follows the lesson with an activity that her students can do then post to Seesaw. “My students have tried their best to accomplish their work. On our Monday morning meetings, we always encourage our students to try their best and keep their same goals as they would normally have in school,” Emmer said. “We also do weekly Facetimes with our students to check in on them, listen to them read to us and practice something they might need help on.” Emmer and the rest of the teachers at Hillel understand

tinue to encourage them and give them praise so they can feel successful in their work from home and keep their motivation going.”

Elizabeth Emmer

Dealing with Dyslexia Local teen shares his journey to overcome learning challenges.

lex Bean was only 13 years old when he heard his English teacher say, “I really don’t believe in Alex. I don’t think he has the ability to go anywhere in life.” She unknowingly revealed this to Bean while on speaker phone with his English tutor. She called Bean later that day to apologize, but he wouldn’t accept it. “I will use this every day to prove you wrong,” Bean told her. Now Bean, 17, has graduated from Frankel Jewish Academy with a 3.7 GPA and will be attending Indiana University to study media, technology and culture with a minor in fashion design. Bean was diagnosed with dyslexia in fourth grade. Throughout elementary and middle school, he was given excessive help. “A lot of things were handed to me. I never had to put much effort into anything,” he said. “It became a curse. This only put me at a lower advantage for high school.” When he started high school at FJA, everything changed. He was put into difficult classes and no longer had a hand to hold. Bean, who describes himself as an “anxious person,” became extremely overweight due to his stress. He leaned on therapy for his mental health, but this didn’t solve his other problems. “They put me into a massive ocean,” he added. “I was always the kid who would say,

‘Everything is everyone else’s fault but mine.’ They thought I was just a kid that didn’t care. There were a lot of teachers who gave up on me.” Bean encountered an especially difficult teacher his sophomore year. After continuing to fail in his class, Bean scheduled a meeting with the teacher, but it solved nothing. Bean said this teacher even called him an “idiot” and a “terrorist.” Bean went to his parents, hoping they would fix the situation like usual. But this time was different. Seth Korelitz, director of Jewish studies at FJA, called Bean into his office. “He told me going through life will only become a disaster if you rely on other people to take care of the issues for you,” Bean said. “It really made me think.”

“I’ve become very happy with who I am. I accept every single one of my flaws.” — ALEX BEAN Shortly after this experience, Bean was in a clothing store with his father. He noticed that while he tried on a size XXL hoodie, his father was wearing a men’s medium.

COURTESY OF ALEX BEAN

JENNA ANDERSON CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“It all hit me,” Bean said. “I realized that I need to become my own person.” Bean started volunteering at Friendship Circle and getting involved with UMatter, a program focused on empowering teens to shatter the stigmas surrounding mental health challenges and suicide. “I became very immersed in that world,” he said. “It taught me how to advocate for myself and be my own independent person.” Bean also used music, writing and tennis to cope with his stress and anxiety. “It was the first time in my day where I didn’t have to think about anything except hitting a ball,” he added. Bean’s biggest inspiration is his aunt, Lindsey Finsilver, who passed away from cancer in

2016. Whenever he feels frustrated or unhappy, he thinks of his aunt for motivation. “If she can fight, I can fight,” Bean said. While Bean’s mental state was improving, so was his physical state. He lost nearly 50 pounds with the help of a teacher, Adam Shireman, who is also a bodybuilder. They shared goals and developed a friendship. Bean’s weight loss boosted his confidence in every aspect of his life. “One day I woke up and I was dealing with everything on my own,” he said. “I’ve become very happy with who I am. I accept every single one of my flaws.” This is first in a series about teens overcoming their mental health challenges.

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COURTESY OF JSL

Jews in the D

The Greatest Generation Special mailing will honor oldest Jewish Americans. BARBARA LEWIS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

TOP: The late Louis Berlin at last year’s brunch. ABOVE: Marcia and Lucille, two life-long friends who have attended the brunch for many years, both turned 100 this year and planned to attend together. This photo is from Marcia’s 99th birthday party.

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hey represent the “greatest generation” of Americans, who lived through the Great Depression, World War II (including some who survived the Holocaust), the Civil Rights era, the Vietnam War and the Great Recession. They are not about to be held back by COVID-19, even though the way we honor them has to change. For the first time in 19 years, the annual Bessie Spector Oldest Jewish Americans Brunch will take place in spirit rather than in person. This year, Detroit’s most senior Jewish citizens will receive a special tribute package by mail. “We always give out certificates signed by the governor,” said Leslie Katz, director of Friends of Jewish Senior Life, which coordinates the event with JVS, Jewish Family Service, the Jewish Community Center and the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. This year, she said, the group will mail the certificates, along with a customized

letter, a list of seniors being honored, a large-print jumbo word-search book — and a copy of this article. Katz and her committee, headed by Julie Zussman of Huntington Woods and Sharon Alterman of West Bloomfield, have about 120 people on their list, but they are eager to hear about others who should be included. The only criteria are to be 95 or older by the end of 2020, Jewish and live in the greater Detroit area. The annual program started in 2001 when the now-defunct Coalition on Jewish Eldercare Services invited people over 90 to a luncheon in May, which is Older Americans Month. They urged attendees to bring friends and family as well. That first brunch was an intimate event for about 20 honorees, held at Fleischman Residence. Word got out. In subsequent years, so many seniors wanted to attend — and so many friends and family wanted to join them — that the event was moved to the

Jimmy Prentis Morris Jewish Community Center in Oak Park, then to Handleman Hall in the West Bloomfield JCC and finally to Congregation Shaarey Zedek, the only venue big enough to accommodate the crowd. The organizers also limited the size by raising the qualifying age to 95 instead of the original 90. Still, more than 400 attended last year, including more than a dozen honorees over age 100. In 2005, the event was named in memory of Bessie Spector, one of the original honorees. Spector’s granddaughter, Joan Chernoff-Epstein, said Bessie enjoyed the annual brunch immensely until she died in 2005 at the age of 102. Chernoff-Epstein, of Birmingham, said her grandmother “kept the most beautiful home; she made the most delicious blintzes and banana cake that anyone ever tasted.” Chernoff-Epstein remembers when Carol Rosenberg, then director of JSL’s forerunner, Jewish Homes and Aging Services, asked Bessie to share a special memory. Her grandmother mentioned the first time she saw her husband getting out of the shower. Committee member Joyce Weingarten of West Bloomfield said her grandmother, Fannie Whiteman, also attended one of the first luncheons. Weingarten later accompanied her husband’s grandmother, Belle Rosender, and her father, Louis Berlin, who attended the last three brunches. “He was so proud to be there,” said Weingarten. “He would sing to the music and even got up and danced.”

Berlin died in April, and Weingarten said she will miss attending the brunch with him when it resumes, hopefully next year. Julie Zussman of Huntington Woods, one of the event chairs, said she feels like she’s “late to the dance,” because she started attending the brunch in 2017. Her father-in-law, Milt Zussman, was her “ticket” to the event, she said. Last year, the family had four generations there. In addition to her and her husband, Rick, Milt’s guests included his grandson Adam Zussman and Adam’s daughter, Delaney. Milt, now 98, spends much of his time in Florida but always made it back to Michigan for the brunch. “He has driven himself to every brunch and only wants us to meet him there,” said Zussman. Milt says what he likes best about the event is that his son picks up the tab. “It’s such a simchah!” said co-chair Sharon Alterman. “Families really look forward to it, and honorees’ children and grandchildren come from all over the country to attend. It’s so feel-good!” The event is usually held around Memorial Day to make it easier for out-of-towners to come. As soon as the mailing is complete, the committee will turn their attention to planning next year’s event, with the hope that such a gathering will again be feasible. They already have a theme: “Our Classics: The Greatest Generation.” To add someone to the honoree list, or to make a tribute gift recognizing someone being honored, contact Leslie Katz at lkatz@jslmi. org.

Camp Ramah in Canada Closes for the Summer CORRIE COLF STAFF WRITER

Camp Ramah in Canada announced May 19 that it won’t hold summer camp this summer due to Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, announcing that no residential summer camps will be allowed to open in Ontario due to the coronavirus pandemic. Located in southern Ontario, Camp Ramah in Canada has been serving Jewish youth since 1960. The camp is run through the Ramah Camping Network, a large group of summer camps affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism with locations in the United States, Canada and Israel. “While this is not surprising to us, it is, nonetheless, heartbreaking news. It brings home what we knew was nearly certain — that we would not be able to meet on the shores of Skeleton Lake this summer,” read the press release. “In the end, it was not our decision.” The news comes just nine

days after the camp announced the cancellation of the first session of summer camp set to begin June 24. This year, they were looking forward to celebrating the 60th anniversary of Camp Ramah. “Our hearts break thinking of all that was ‘supposed’ to happen this summer and will not,” read the statement. Camp Ramah will soon be sending out more information regarding the next steps, including refunds and donations, and information on virtual programming they are implementing. Camp Ramah also hosted a Zoom town hall event on Sunday, May 24, for families with questions.

Award-Winning Student JN STAFF

Will Hearn from Clio, Michigan, earned the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award from the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. Each spring, the faculty nominate students who have made stand-out academic achievements and have achieved a grade point average of at least 3.8 in Judaic studies courses. Hearn majored in Judaic studies, Middle East studies and minored in religion. He impressed several of his teachers with his original thought and commitment to course work. Professor Deborah Dash Moore praised Hearn as a model student: “Always deeply

engaged, he wrote a superb paper on ‘Rabbinical Heroes: How Perceptions of Jewish Military Chaplains Shifted from the Civil War to World War II,’ taking off from an article published in the Detroit Jewish News.” Hearn’s paper argued that during the Civil War, Jews saw military chaplains as a means for Jews to progress in comparison to Christians, and during World War I as a way of encouraging religious tolerance. Not until World War II were they seen as war heroes. “This is an original and compelling interpretation drawn from a variety of Jewish newspaper sources,” said Dash Moore.

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Jews in the D my skill set. I thought I could make a difference. JN: What are the School of Medicine’s strengths? Dr. Schweitzer: It has a 150-year illustrious history. There is a can-do attitude of the students and graduates and a commitment to Detroit. JN: What are your short-term and long-term goals? Dr. Schweitzer: Wayne State University WSU School is the largest single-campus medical school of Medicine in the U.S. It trains 300 students a year. We need to shore up clinical sites and implement a new curriculum. JN: What do you see as the biggest challenges for your role? Dr. Schweitzer: To ensure at Buffalo at age 23. He that medical education is availcompleted a residency able to students whatever disin diagnostic radioloruptions may occur. (He noted gy at Nassau County that most medical students Medical Center (now couldn’t work in hospitals Nassau University during the COVID pandemic). Medical Center) and a JN: How does Wayne Mark Schweitzer, M.D. fellowship in musculoState University School of skeletal radiology at the Medicine rank as a research University of California, San Diego. He has institution? published extensively, served as a lecturer Dr. Schweitzer: Toward the upper at Harvard University Medical School, and middle. It’s a good research institution, holds many medical patents. especially in ophthalmology and visual “I attended inner-city public universities sciences, basic sciences, biochemistry and during my undergraduate and medical population health. school training, and I served at public safeJN: Your biography mentions that ty net hospitals,” Dr. Schweitzer says. “My you have participated in many clinical passion throughout my career has been trials and hold a lot of patents. Can you education at all levels. The DNA of Wayne describe these? State University and the city of Detroit are Dr. Schweitzer: I worked on rheumatointertwined, and the university’s national logical agents for 20 to 25 years. I consult reputation is illustrious. I’m very much once or twice a year for the Food and Drug looking forward to serving the people of Administration (FDA). greater Detroit and Michigan.” JN: What is the status of the School of Dr. Schweitzer says that his religion and Medicine’s relationship with the Detroit Jewish heritage, including its ethical teachMedical Center? ings, are an important aspect of his profesDr. Schweitzer: I’m hopeful that we can sional life. He and his wife, Sharyl, a Stern have a positive, mutually beneficial relaCollege graduate, and their family live in tionship but there won’t be an alignment of West Bloomfield and attend The Shul. incentives. Tenet (the for-profit corporation Dr. Schweitzer explained more about his based in Texas that has owned the Detroit career and new position during a recent Medical Center since 2013) has to send online video interview. money to Dallas while the Detroit Medical Center is taking care of poor people. These JN: What was the appeal of this position? are different missions but commonalities Dr. Schweitzer: My passion is medical in our needs. I am open-minded about education. I like to solve problems — that’s nonprofits.

New dean looks to enhance Wayne State Medical School. SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

ark Schweitzer, M.D., 57, the new dean of Wayne State University School of Medicine and vice president of Health Affairs for the university, is a preeminent radiologist who served most recently as chair of the Department of Radiology at the Stony Brook University School of Medicine in New York. “We conducted in-depth interviews with a number of outstanding candidates during a yearlong national search, and Dr. Schweitzer’s experience, enthusiasm and vision made him a perfect fit for Wayne State University,” said M. Roy Wilson, M.D., university president. Dr. Schweitzer succeeds Jack Sobel, M.D., who served as dean for the past five years and will continue on the medical school’s faculty. In addition to extensive achievements as a researcher and educator, Dr. Schweitzer has served as an administrator in many hospitals, including vice chair for clinical practice and chair of the Information Management Group for Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He has served on advisory panels for the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration and as a principal or co-principal investigator on more than 30 grants. A native of Plainview, New York, Dr. Schweitzer received his bachelor of science in biomedical education at the City University of New York and graduated from a combined six-year medical program at the State University of New York

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MAY 28 • 2020

WSU

Challenges and Opportunity

Filling the Gap

KAREN RUBENFIRE

JN: What is the status of affiliation talks with the Henry Ford Health System? Dr. Schweitzer: We are having clinical affiliation talks with a number of institutions. No one institute can take the whole class. We need capacity to handle unexpected situations. JN: Were you concerned about taking this position given the turmoil among the members of the University Board and the opposition of some toward Dr. Wilson? Dr. Schweitzer: I met with every member of the board; they initiated it. There was a unanimous vote to support my hiring. I expect a productive relationship. They asked about the (medical school) tuition increase but that was appropriate. JN: Will the COVID-19 have any impact on medical school curricula? Dr. Schweitzer: How far does a rubber band stretch? There is inertia. When you let go, does it stretch or break? JN: What about hospitals? Will they be better prepared for the next emergency? Dr. Schweitzer: For the next decade, yes. After that, no. JN: What was your impression of the Canadian health care system? Dr. Schweitzer: We have some really excellent health care (in the U.S.) but in Canada, at least each province has a system that can manage within its system effectively. Canada has a more holistic training system, which I want to instill here. There is a focus on the broader societal impact — not just treating one patient but all patients with the judicious use of resources.

Project Healthy Community expands distribution efforts in Northwest Detroit. MAYA GOLDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

roject Healthy Community (PHC), a nonprofit organization focused on aiding community wellness and education efforts in Northwest Detroit, is expanding food and hygiene product distribution to families and senior citizens in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the next three months, the organization aims to raise $250,000 for its COVID relief efforts, according to a letter from PHC’s president and CEO Dr. Melvyn Rubenfire. Karen Rubenfire, PHC’s COO and Melvyn Rubenfire’s daughter, told the Jewish News that the group has already raised $141,782, thanks to grants, major donations and smaller individual gifts. PHC plans to allocate around $72,000 to purchasing supplies for a home and personal hygiene pantry made available to families in Northwest Detroit. “People don’t just need food in order to be healthy,” Karen Rubenfire said. “You need to have cleaning products for your home, hygiene products for yourself, things like that.” $40,000 will go toward an “SOS” fund PHC has set up in coordination with four of its partner schools to help Northwest Detroit families over at least the next four months. Families can apply for SOS

Northwest Detroit residents pick up supplies from a Project Healthy Community food pantry.

stipends monthly, and PHC has already received about 22 applications for funds, Karen Rubenfire said. “The goal is to extend this beyond four months,” she said. “It’s not going away quickly, and there’s such urgency.” PHC also intends to devote $138,000 of its target amount to providing food to seniors and families in Northwest Detroit who aren’t currently covered by the organization. PHC partners with Gleaners Community Food Bank and Forgotten Harvest to run a food pantry in the area and has worked with Gleaners to expand its reach since the pandemic started. The organization is also working to maintain and expand its Family Wellness Center and in-home health behavior courses, which aim to address disparities in preventative care in the community. PHC was inspired by Temple Israel’s Rabbi Joshua Bennett in 2012, when he gave a Yom Kippur sermon about the importance of community service work. Shortly after, Melvyn Rubenfire, a Temple Israel member, established the nonprofit, along with his late wife, Diane, and their daughter Karen. Many of PHC’s programs are run out of the Northwest Activities Center,

a former Jewish Community Center in Northwest Detroit. When COVID-19 came to Michigan in March, the Rubenfires and their colleagues at PHC knew they wanted to help the community where they’ve been working for the past eight years. “When this all first started … we knew we had to do something quickly that would be as impactful as the rest of the stuff we do,” Karen Rubenfire said. “The focus was around emergent needs and this addition to making our food pantry much more sustainable and impactful for the families.” Detroit residents have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. With high rates of poverty and poor access to healthcare, Detroit’s communities of color have found themselves particularly vulnerable to the virus. PHC has worked with community members in northwest Detroit to identify what residents need during these challenging times. “We’ve tailored all of our programs around the community’s ask, so to speak, filling those gaps. “This was another opportunity,” she said. “We wanted to be that vehicle to provide those resources.”

MAY 28 • 2020

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eymour “Sy” Rosenwasser celebrated his 90th birthday on May 22, 2020. Family gathered outside a window to have a celebratory meal near him. He looks forward to gathering in person with his kids, grandkids, great-grandkids and granddogs. Sy has been battling the coronavirus for five+ weeks but is getting stronger and healthier; he appreciates all the kind wishes and support from his family, friend and caregivers.

Howard 95th

eatrice Howard of West Bloomfield will celebrate her 95th birthday on June 4, 2020. She plans to enjoy this joyous occasion here in Michigan with members of her family. Wishing her love and many best wishes are her children, Daniel (Vicki), Steven (Debbie), Robert, David (Rowena), Richard (Sherry) and Donna, her grandchildren and great-grandchild as well as many nieces and nephews. Contributions in her honor may be made to JARC or to a charity of your choice.

Spirit

A Shavuot

Revelation SAM GLASER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

havuot is a mysterious holiday. This commemoration of receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai isn’t given a specific date for its celebration; instead, we are told in Sefer Sh’mot (the Book of Exodus) to schedule it seven weeks from the second night of Passover. I never heard about it growing up. It transpires after Hebrew school Sam Glaser adjourns for the summer, and other than serving Aunt Martha’s blintzes without mentioning why, my folks never brought it up. The tradition is to enjoy four sumptuous meals over the two days of the holiday and ensure that at least a few of them feature dairy foods. Evidently, back at Mount Sinai, we received the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher) but didn’t have time to master proper slaughtering practices, so eating dairy was a safer bet. One highlight of Shavuot is the custom of staying up all night to learn Torah, called Tikkun L’eil Shavuot, the healing of the night of Shavuot. Why a healing, one might ask? In the description of the morning of the Revelation

at Sinai, the Midrash describes how the Israelites overslept and had to be awakened by Moshe. How could we have fallen asleep the night before? We should have been too excited to sleep a wink! Thanks to our exhausted ancestors, we pull an all-nighter to rectify this grievous error. Shavuot is one of my favorite holidays. With no specific duties other than learning, praying and eating as much as possible, it’s a (cheese) cakewalk. One reason Shavuot has no set date is because the essence of Torah is outside of time and space. Whereas sanctifying food requires a new blessing with every meal, the blessing over Torah study need only happen once a day. We don’t just study Torah. We live Torah. This blessing finishes with the words, “Who gives us Torah,” stated in the present tense. Shavuot is less an anniversary than a celebration of the continuous flow of Revelation. Some years, we have rented a cabin in the local mountains with a minyan of friends and a Torah scroll to reenact the Sinai experience. In our ’hood, most shuls keep java on tap and use

the extended period to dive into titillating text study until dawn. When the horizon ignites at 5 a.m., all the bleary-eyed survivors slam-dunk a festival Shacharit service and then walk home to pass out until lunchtime. One year after Shavuot, I learned that two of our close friends lost their wives. Both were young mothers, each with three grade-school age children. Strikingly beautiful women; beacons of charity and kindness. Two agonizing funerals were followed by shivah minyanim (prayers during the first week of mourning). After the first funeral, I was asked to lead Mincha at the shivah house. I shouldn’t have agreed: I sobbed throughout the service, starting and stopping and trying again. When visiting with their guests, the husbands would bravely tell anecdotes about their wives and then convulse again in misery. Speechless family and friends watched as prepubescent kids struggled with Kaddish. These calamities occurred the day after we celebrated the giving of Torah. I struggled, as did many in our community, with this stark contrast — on the one hand, the holiday emphasizes that everything happening to us is directed by God and, like the Jews at Sinai, it’s our job to respond with acceptance and allegiance. But I’m human, and I was grieving, and part of me struggled to accept the horrible events handed to people I really cared about. To add to this schizophrenic contrast, the next night I went to a Lakers game with my brother Joey. Yes, life is for the living. The energy was palpable as the crowd jumped to its feet with every heroic basket. We were awestruck by the team’s miraculous coordination and perseverance. I had to resort to inserting earplugs half-

way through the game thanks to the din of manic fans. After the final buzzer, I went to hear some of the greatest musicians in the world play at an L.A. nightclub. Keyboard wizard David Garfield led his septet through the brambles of some of the thorniest charts imaginable, bringing waves of unbridled pleasure to this music lover. Again I was brought to tears, but this time they were tears of joy. I decided to drive home over the canyon, rather than the more expedient freeway. At the top of the pass, I pulled off at a beautiful wilderness area, the headquarters of the L.A.-based environmental group Tree People. With the aid of the ambient glow of the metropolis, I hiked a mile to the top of a hill and prayed Ma’ariv under a waxing moon. How did these deaths figure in God’s plan? Where is God’s “beneficent kindness” amidst this daunting sorrow wracking our community? The same God who arranged for these two women to pass is the same God who created the universe, who gave us Avraham and Sarah, who freed us from slavery in Egypt and gifted the Torah 3,500 years ago on the very first Shavuot. This is the Makom, the Omnipresent, who will help my now single-father friends cope and bring them and their children healing. We are always receiving divine messages, heavenly love notes, holy whispers of Oral Torah. We may not always understand them. Shavuot is here to open our hearts to this communication and encourage us to keep the conversation alive. Sam Glaser is a performer, composer and author in Los Angeles. He has released 25 CDs of his music and a book titled The Joy of Judaism. This essay is an excerpt from his book.

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Spirit torah portion

Joy In The World

hat is the relationship between the giving of the Torah and the festival of first fruits in the Temple — the two names for Shavuot? And why was our Torah given in the desert, outside the Holy Land? The Ramban (Nahmanides) maintains that diaspora Jews observe general laws like the Sabbath and tefillin only in order not to forget them before they return to Israel because, he maintains, genuine fulfillment of the biblical laws can only be accomplished there. Also, the first Shavuot fell on Friday, the 50th day, whereas the revelation was not until one day later, Shabbat, the second day of the festival celebrated in the diaspora. After all, Mount

Sinai is not within the land. The must affect and transform the giving of the Torah is based on entire planet. its having been given in exile. Torah must welcome every Why? I believe the gentile into its protective Torah — certainly the tent. Abraham must realize Seven Noahide Laws of his destiny as a father of a morality and even the multitude of nations, and Ten Commandments every convert must be seen — is meant for the as another Abraham and entire world. Doesn’t Rabbi Shlomo welcomed into the family. Riskin Maimonides exhort us As Boaz replies to Ruth when she asks why he has to teach every human to Parshat shown her, “a stranger,” keep the Noahide Laws Shavuot so many kindnesses: “You and insist that eventual2nd Day: ly “everyone will return Deuteronomy left your father and your 14:22-16:17; mother and the land of to the true religion”? Numbers your birth, and have gone Hence our Torah was 28:26-31; with a nation which you given in exile because Habakkuk did not know yesterday or we must bring its 3:1-19. the day before ...” life-giving waters even Finally, there is the connecto the desert and turn even tion between Shavuot and the the farthest corner of the exile into an outpost of Torah. Torah festival of first fruits in the

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MAY 28 • 2020

Temple. The major function of the Temple is to have all the nations flock to it to learn Torah. “For from Zion shall go forth Torah, and the world of God from Jerusalem.” As Isaiah teaches: “For My house must be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is the founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs and chief rabbi of Efrat, Israel.

CONVERSATIONS How do you feel of the accuracy of the Isaiah quote that ends the article? Can you see such magnanimity in today’s world or is it just a fervent wish?

Eretz

An IDF ‘Lone Soldier’ Finds a New Home During COVID-19 Southfield native Ari Weiss was stuck on base for 45 days. CORRIE COLF STAFF WRITER

outhfield native and Frankel Jewish Academy alumnus, Corporal Ari Weiss, 19, is a combat soldier in the Combat Engineering Corps of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and joined the IDF in August 2019. He is in the midst of a four month battalion-wide training period, and, like the rest of his base, he was placed in extended quarantine during COVID-19. Lone Soldiers are men and women from around the world who choose to leave the comfort of their own homes and families to become soldiers in the IDF. Weiss decided to become a Lone Soldier after a five-week Israel summer tour program that takes 10th-grade students on a tour of the entire country. He immediately fell in love with Israel and knew after three weeks he wanted to move there. While Weiss’ role has not changed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, he has had plenty of friends who have been ordered

to help out during the height of the pandemic. Some soldiers helped distribute food, make sure roads were closed and ensure people were staying safe. Due to the outbreak, Weiss and the other soldiers also had to remain on their base for 45 days. Usually, they are allowed to get out every weekend or at least every other weekend. “It was difficult, I’ll be honest. We were supposed to get a week off for Pesach and everything got cast into uncertainty,” Weiss told the Jewish News. “A lot of us were worried about basic things, such as clothes and soap, etc. I luckily had a little bit of an advanced warning so I had brought enough clothes.” The IDF brought washing machines and dryers to the base, as well as shipments of soap, shampoo and food, courtesy of some of their donors. The Friends of the IDF (FIDF) has also stepped up during this time of uncertainty. The FIDF is a nationwide, non-political, non-military

organization that offers educational, cultural and social services programs to support the well-being of IDF soldiers, veterans and family members. Paula Lebowitz, FIDF Michigan Executive Director, helps coordinate fundraisers in Detroit and suburban cities for the FIDF. All the funds go directly toward the well-being of IDF soldiers. Throughout the pandemic, she has been reaching out to the parents of Lone Soldiers to check in on them. “Our soldiers need our support since they can’t fly home and be with their families,” Lebowitz said. “Most of them don’t have family in Israel, so it is our responsibility to make sure they are taken care of.” FIDF Michigan emails families of Lone Soldiers to keep them up to date. “The FIDF Israel office sends us any updates on our local soldiers so that we can disseminate that information to the families here in Michigan,” Lebowitz said.

Weiss’ parents, David Weiss and Jordana Wolfson, especially felt the support from FIDF Michigan. Lebowitz personally called Wolfson to check in and ask how she was doing and how Weiss was doing. “I almost burst into tears because it was the sweetest phone call … I felt as though I was trying to control everything and stay calm and it was so nice to receive support from the FIDF that somebody cared that my child is over in Israel and that I might be having a hard time,” Wolfson said. Wolfson is proud of Weiss and is always concerned for his safety. “It’s very hard and very scary to be away from my family during this time,” Weiss said. Weiss talks with his parents every week before Shabbat, but with all the extra time on base, they have been able to connect a lot more, an unexpected benefit to help him and his family get through this challenging time.

MAY 28 • 2020

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CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 2020 MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY SALUTES YOU!

YOU ARE THE HOPE OF THE FUTURE. WE WISH YOU WELL AND IF MICHIGAN STATE IS YOUR NEXT HOME, WE CAN’T WAIT TO SEE YOU.

BEN FRANCIS ’21, FINANCE, POLITICAL THEORY AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY, WITH A MINOR IN JEWISH STUDIES

“I am incredibly grateful for all of the opportunities and memories I have made as part of being a student leader at the Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel and MSU Hillel.”

SERLING INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH STUDIES AND MODERN ISRAEL / MSU HILLEL JEWISH STUDENT CENTER / OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS

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Mazel Tov!

JOSEPH ADELMAN

NOA ALTERMAN

Groves High School National Honor Society, DECA state finalist, Warren Astronomical Society, Friendship Circle volunteer, built and donated to Little Free Libraries. University of Michigan

Cranbrook Kingswood Student Council, Strickland Writing Award, Most Improved Student Award, Dean’s List, Gold Key, Varsity Field Hockey, Kulanu BBG MIT mom, Cranbrook Envisions a Cure. Indiana University

Samantha & Ryan Grosinger Congratulations to Ryan on your graduation from Detroit Mercy School of Law and to Samantha from the University of Michigan Class of 2020. Good luck to you both on your future ventures... Ryan in the work force & Samantha at Cardozo Law School. Your accomplishments continually make us so proud!

Love You — Mom, Dad and Bennett

ALEX AISNER West Bloomfield High School Summa Cum Laude, Jiu Jitsu competition medalist. University of Michigan

DEAN ALEKMAN North Farmington High School National Honor Society, AP Scholar, Jewish Student Connections, Greenberg AZA Board. Michigan State University

JENNA ANDERSON West Bloomfield High School Varsity Soccer, Varsity Poms Captain, Editor-inChief Spectrum newspaper, Co-President Jewish Culture Club, Friendship Circle Teen President, Jewish Fund Teen Board, Jewish News contributor, Michigan Chronicle intern/ contributor, National Honor Society, OAA Scholar-Athlete. Northwestern University

MAX BARASH West Bloomfield High School National Honor Society, West Bloomfield DECA Vice President, DECA International competition qualifier twice, President of Kishon AZA #63, Dale Carnegie course graduate. Michigan State University

Mazel Tov!

Ryan Grosinger Samantha Grosinger Noa Alterman

How thrilling to have three graduates in one year! We are kvelling from your amazing accomplishments! May you each go from strength to strength! Ryan Grosinger, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law Samantha Grosinger, University of Michigan Noa Alterman, Cranbrook Kingswood

With love, L’dor v’dor Grama Bertie and Grandpa Emery

continued on page 32 MAY 28 • 2020

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Congratulations! Henry Cantor There’s a bright and beautiful future ahead for you and I’m so proud of how you’re working to make that happen. All my love, Nina

Mazel Tov! Carlie Suris

May your future be just like you… awesome, bright and beautiful! Dream big and always remember that you are braver than you believe, smarter than you think and loved more than you’ll ever know. We Love You, Your Berman & Sakwa aunts, uncles and cousins

Mazel Tov! Stacey Hirsch Dear Stacey, You are a real life superhero! We are very proud of all that you have achieved so far. You are truly a leader and the best! Continue to dream big, work hard, and follow your passions. We love you!

All our love, Mom, Dad, Rachel and Melanie

Congratulations! Ben Shafritz Congratulations we are very proud of you! Love you so much, Grammy & Bubba

cap&gown 2020

continued from page 31

YONI BARASH

ARI BELCHINSKY

Farber Hebrew Day School Friendship Circle volunteer, Cross Country, NCSY Chapter Board, DBN Kollel, NCSY Torah Growth Award. Yeshiva University

Berkley High School National Honor Society, Varsity Tennis, Varsity Soccer, Varsity Basketball Captain, Outstanding Senior/ Student Athlete Award, Twoyear International DECA qualifier, Yad Ezra volunteer. University of Michigan

ARIELLE BAUER Groves High School Varsity Tennis, Youth Federation of Temple Israel Board, UMatter Board, volunteer tennis teacher, high honors. Washington University in St. Louis

JESS BERG North Farmington High School Model U.N., Student Board, Theatre program. Michigan State University

MATTHEW BERG ALEX BEAN Frankel Jewish Academy MVP Boys Varsity Tennis, AllCatholic League Boys Varsity Tennis, Boys Varsity Tennis Captain. Indiana University

North Farmington High School Club gymnastics and medals of achievement, Junior Olympic National Gymnastics competition 2019, Academic honors. Grand Valley State University

RYAN BERKE North Farmington High School National Honor Society, Varsity Cross County, Varsity Track and Field, Junior Hockey, BBYO. Gap year to play junior hockey continued on page 34

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MAY 28 • 2020

cap&gown 2020

continued from page 32

SAM BERLIN

AVI BLOCH

Berkley High School National Honor Society, DECA, Peer to Peer, Yad Ezra volunteer, coed Soccer. University of WisconsinMadison

Walled Lake Western High School Marching Band, Band, Jazz Band, Regional and All-State Band in Alto Sax, Forensics regional and state finalist, music mentor for middle schoolers, post B’nai Mitzvah & Judaism PB&J at B’nai Moshe, BBYO. Michigan State University

KAELA BERNARD Bloomfield Hills High School Four-year Varsity Tennis (Captain), Tennis state runner-up twice, Sophomore Secretary Student Council, Student Leadership Junior VicePresident, Student Leadership Executive Vice-President, National Honor Society. Elon University

MITCHELL BLACKMAN Frankel Jewish Academy All-Academic, All-Catholic and AllDistrict awards for Varsity Baseball and Basketball, Michigan Region’s Regional Convention Coordinator, BBYO earner, Maccabi Baseball. Michigan State University

JARED BLOCH

Walled Lake Western High School Orchestra, Dearborn Youth Symphony, Regional and All-State Orchestra Viola, middle school music mentor, Forensics regional and state finalist, I.V. League Science Club, Musical actor, Pit Orchestra, PB&J program at B’nai Moshe, BBYO. Michigan State University

continued on page 36

Mazel Tov

1ST YEAR BOARD MEMBERS

2ND YEAR BOARD MEMBERS

to the members of The Jewish Fund Teen Board 2019-2020, a diverse group of Jewish teens who have deepened their engagement within our community through learning of communal needs and responding through philanthropic grantmaking. 1ST YEAR BOARD MEMBERS Max Adamczyk

Logan Edelheit

Adam Krugel

Hannah Rashty

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

10th Grade, Groves High School

11th Grade, Walled Lake Western High School

10th Grade, West Bloomﬁeld High School

Adina Alterman

Max Edelheit

Cami Krugel

Tali Rubenstein

10th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

10th Grade, Groves High School

10th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

10th Grade, Groves High School

Victor Berger

Shira Ellis

Mia Lewis

Lindsay Schlussel

10th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

10th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

11th Grade, Seaholm High School

10th Grade, Berkley High School

Josh Bertman

Noah Goldberg

Haley Lipman

Cooper Schoenberg

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

12th Grade, Aim High School

10th Grade, Walled Lake Northern High School

10th Grade, Groves High School

Alison Chapnick

Julia Klein

Cara Lopatin

Joshua Schreiber

10th Grade, Groves High School

11th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

11th Grade, Farber Hebrew Day School

11th Grade, North Farmington High School

Carly Cohen

Caleb Kleinfeldt

Alexis Morton

Anna Weinbaum

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

10th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

11th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

Morgan Cook

Marlee Kroll

Jonah Mougoue

Macy West

10th Grade, International Academy

11th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

11th Grade, The Roeper School

10th Grade, Groves High School

Noah Eaton 11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

2ND YEAR BOARD MEMBERS Emily Abrams

Lily Foltyn

Max Morganroth

Robert Victor

11th Grade, Walled Lake Northern High School

11th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

12th Grade, Seaholm High School

11th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

Jane Borenstein

Evan Israel

Haylie Polakoff

Ilan Weiss

11th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

12th Grade, Detroit Country Day School

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

11th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

Chase Brodsky

Elliot Kaftan

Barry Sabin

Sam Wittenberg

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

12th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

12th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

Elisha Cooper

Darby Krugel

Joseph Schwartz

Isabel Zaltz

12th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

12th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

11th Grade, Groves High School

11th Grade, Berkley High School

Matthew Doctoroff

Jesse Krugel

Gabriel Singer

Zoe Zaltz

11th Grade, Berkley High School

12th Grade, Walled Lake Western High School

11th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

11th Grade, Berkley High School

Abby Foltyn 11th Grade, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School

Special thanks go to our 2019-2020 Leadership Committee for their dedication and hard work in facilitating board meetings and site visits. Elijah Appelman Jessica Goldberg Leah Segal 12th Grade, Bloomﬁeld Hills High School

12th Grade, North Farmington High School

12th Grade, Berkley High School

Maddie Feinstein

Nia Kepes

Benny Shaevsky

12th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

12th Grade, Birmingham Groves High School

12th Grade, Frankel Jewish Academy

Each year, Teen Board members select critical issues affecting the community to address through their grantmaking. This year, the focus areas included impacting community members with mental health issues or disabilities, and improving the health and welfare of those experiencing signiﬁcant economic hardship. The Jewish Fund Teen Board is proud to announce that a total of $100,000 in grants has been awarded to the following organizations: Common Ground: Mental Health Chatbot Acquisition and Implementation • Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries: GATHER House • Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy Network: Tai Chi Life Enrichment: For Body and Mind Jewish Family Service of Metropolitan Detroit: Expanding Access to Mental Health Services • Jewish Senior Life Foundation: Coping with the Challenges of Mental Illness in an Aging Population Kadima: Financial Needs Fund for Low-income Adults with Mental Illness • Lighthouse/South Oakland Shelter: Stability for Homeless Students • Mariners Inn: Residential Youth Prevention Program For more information on the work of The Jewish Fund Teen Board, or to apply for the 2020-2021 Board position, please visit www.teenboard.thejewishfund.org. Application deadline is June 15, 2020. The Teen Board is a project of The Jewish Fund. The Jewish Fund was established in 1997 from the sale proceeds of Sinai Hospital to the Detroit Medical Center. Sinai Hospital was a Jewish community funded facility that grew into one of metropolitan Detroit’s top health care institutions. As a legacy of Sinai Hospital, The Jewish Fund continues the tradition of assuring quality and compassionate care for those in need in Metropolitan Detroit.

The Jewish Fund Teen Board is proud to be a part of the Foundation Board Incubator, a project of the Jewish Teen Funders Network, which is generously funded by Laura Lauder and the Maimonides Fund.

Mazel Tov! Sydnie Burnstein We are so proud of you. Set your goals, take the action, live your dreams. You will do great things. We look forward to your journey ahead.

Love, Mom, Dad and Samantha

Mazel Tov! Leah Krasnick Leah, We are so incredibly proud of all your accomplishments. Congratulations on your graduation from the University of Michigan! We wish only the best for you and your future. Your family will always be behind you cheering you on.

Love, Mommy, Daddy, Rachel, Julie, Bruno and Dash

cap&gown 2020

continued from page 34

WILL BLOOMBERG

SAM CARLIN

Frankel Jewish Academy National Honor Society, Varsity Soccer Captain, Varsity Basketball Captain, All-Catholic High School League Soccer, AllLeague Catholic High School League Basketball, MVP Boys Soccer, Coach’s Award, Boys Basketball, Jamie Daniels Team First Award, FJA Athlete of the Year, Don Duchene Sr. Foundation Scholarship, Detroit Jewish News Rising Star. Michigan State University

West Bloomfield High School Graduating Summa Cum Laude, Varsity Tennis scholar athlete, National Honor Society, DECA board (national conference twice), BBYO board Kishon AZA, HOSA champion biomedical debate. University of Michigan

CARLI BORDELOVE West Bloomfield High School National Honor Society, President of Jewish Cultural Club, DECA national qualifier, Student leadership, Youth Assistant Award, Temple Israel graduate, Fleischman Senior Living intern, Madrichim at Temple Israel. Michigan State University

SYDNIE BURNSTEIN West Bloomfield High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Ahavah BBG Executive Board, Club Soccer, Friendship Circle volunteer and fellow, Camp Tamarack counselor. Michigan State University

YAEL CHIMOVITZ Berkley High School Captain Varsity Cross Country, Co-president Jewish Student Union, LINK mentor, Track and Field, Habonim Dror, Band. Oakland Community College

ELISHA COOPER Frankel Jewish Academy Varsity Basketball and Soccer Captain, National Honor Society, Teen Board, Teen Volunteer Corps VP, Tech Connect Chairperson, JFS Fellow, Technion International Robotics Competition First Place, Eight Over Eighty, NCJW Youth Award First Place, Piano Gold Cup, Adat Shalom Madricha, AllAcademic and All-League awards. University of Michigan

continued on page 38

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MAY 28 • 2020

¡ ¥ §

CONGRATULATIONS

HILLEL DAY SCHOOL CLASS OF 2016 ALUMNI Eric Adelson Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University

Molly Erlich *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Elon University

Alex Aisner :HVW %ORRPͤHOG +LJK 6FKRRO University of Michigan

Emily Feldman Frankel Jewish Academy University of Michigan

Noa Alterman Cranbrook Kingswood Indiana University

Aerin Fink Cranbrook Kingswood Tulane University

Jacob Banooni %ORRPͤHOG +LOOV +LJK 6FKRRO Completing Accelerated College Experience

Maya Gamer Frankel Jewish Academy Binghamton University

Evan Baxter :HVW %ORRPͤHOG +LJK 6FKRRO Undecided

Ben Goldstein Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University James Madison College

Alex Bean Frankel Jewish Academy Indiana University

Eli Grey Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University Lyman Briggs College

Jonathan (Yoni) Benezra )DUEHU +HEUHZ 'D\ 6FKRRO Undecided Ethan Biederman *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University James Madison College

'DYLG +HUPHOLQ Cranbrook Kingswood University of Michigan Ross School of Business Raphael Ifraimov Frankel Jewish Academy Northwood University

Will Bloomberg Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University

Jeremy Kahan %ORRPͤHOG +LOOV +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University

Elisha Cooper Frankel Jewish Academy University of Michigan

Judah Karesh :HVW %ORRPͤHOG +LJK 6FKRRO Undecided

Jacob Ellenbogen *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO University of Michigan

Jack Katz %HUNOH\ +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University

Nia Kepes *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University Lyman Briggs College Ben Klein *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University

Laela Saulson Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University Jacob Schlussel %HUNOH\ +LJK 6FKRRO University of Michigan

Elan Krakoff Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University

Lauren Schostak %HUNOH\ +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University Lyman Briggs College

+DQQD /XSRYLWFK *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO University of Michigan

Andrew Schulman Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University

Erin Mattler *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University

Maya Siegmann %ORRPͤHOG +LOOV +LJK 6FKRRO Oakland Community College

Kelly Meir *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Northwood University

Emily Sherman *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO University of Arizona

Isaac Mintz :HVW %ORRPͤHOG +LJK 6FKRRO University of Michigan Logan Morof *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Kalamazoo College Ethan Mostyn Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University Russell Presser Frankel Jewish Academy University of Arizona Zachary Rones :HVW %ORRPͤHOG +LJK 6FKRRO Michigan State University Tal Rubin Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University

Scott Siegal *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO Kent State University Ethan Sternberg Walled Lake Central Undecided +DQQDK 6WU\N Frankel Jewish Academy University of Michigan Maya Wolock *URYHV +LJK 6FKRRO University of Michigan 'DQQ\ <O\DJXHY Frankel Jewish Academy Michigan State University

Mazel Tov! Jesse Nathaniel Krugel We’re so proud of everything you’ve accomplished in high school! Wishes for success in college and beyond! Go Blue!

Love, Savta and Saba

Mazel Tov! Darby Morgan Brode Krugel

We are so proud of you! May your years ahead be filled with joy and success.

Love, Savta and Saba 38 |

MAY 28 • 2020

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BRETT DAVIDSON

MARLEE ELIAS

Berkley High School National Honor Society, Varsity Tennis Captain, OAA All-League, Shades of Pink Foundation annual walk volunteer and team captain. Michigan State University

Bloomfield Hills High School Ahavah BBG Executive Board, National Honor Society. Michigan State University

JACOB ELLENBOGEN MAXWELL DAVIS Seaholm High School Presidential Service Award, National Honor Society, ScholarAthlete, Varsity Wrestling, Repair the World/PeerCorps mentor. Michigan State University

EMMA DWOSKIN Bloomfield Hills High School President of Youth Federation of Temple Israel, Varsity Poms Captain, National Honor Society, Yearbook Editor, Anne and Edward Fienman College Scholarship Award, NCJW Jewish Youth Award honorable mention. University of Michigan

Groves High School USY International Convention Co-Chair, CRUSY Region Membership/Kadima Vice President; USY 2019 Achshav Blog Editor, Birmingham Unified Varsity Men’s Hockey, Groves Scriptor Editor-inChief, National Honor Society, Franklin Baseball League Umpire, Camp Tamakwa counselor, Beth Ahm Religious School volunteer. Kivunim Gap Year/University of Michigan

MADDIE FEINSTEIN Walled Lake Northern High School National Honor Society, Summa Cum Laude, SNAPS mentor, Jewish Teen Fund Board, Studio A competitive dancer. Michigan State University

continued on page 42

Mazel Tov! Noa Alterman Noa, We are so proud of all you've accomplished, but we are even prouder of the amazing person you've become. We love you more than words can say.

Love, Mom, Dad, Adina, and Leo

Mazel Tov! Laela Saulson

Mazel Tov on your graduation from FJA! We are so proud of all your accomplishments and excited to see what the next chapter brings. We love you!

Mom & Dad, Isaac, Sophia, Fara, and Daisy

Congratulations! Maya & Rikki Goldman Congratulations to our graduates! We are so proud of all you have achieved. You are both off to great new adventures! We love you, Mom, Dad and Eva

Congratulations! Sam Wittenberg We are incredibly proud of you and so excited that you will be attending your dream school! You have worked so hard, and your amazing accomplishment deserves to be celebrated. GO BLUE!! We love you so much, Mom, Dad, Zach Jonah and Lulu MAY 28 â&#x20AC;˘ 2020

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Mazel Tov! Hanna Lupovitch Ok, Hanny... Transition coming... Into the Unknown!!!!! We are so proud of you! Go Blue!!!

Love Mommy, Daddy and Dahvi

Congratulations! Matthew Gutman Congratulations on your graduation from Bloomfield Hills High School. We are proud of you! Go get ‘em at Michigan State. Go Green! Go White! Love, Dad, Julie, Zachary and Alexis

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MAY 28 • 2020

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continued from page 38

EMILY FELDMAN

JOEY FISHKIND

Frankel Jewish Academy National Honor Society, Basketball and Volleyball Captain, Kol Koleinu Feminist Fellow, President Social Justice and EmpowHer clubs, Baruch Scholarship, U of M Club of Greater Detroit Scholarship, Yearbook editor, Tamarack Teen Council. University of Michigan

Bloomfield Hills High School Varsity Lacrosse, Friendship Circle Board, Temple Israel YFTI, Tamarack Teen Leadership Village and counselor, JV Soccer. Michigan State University

ALEXANDRA FINKELSTEIN Bloomfield Hills High School Class President, AP Scholar with Distinction, Summa Cum Laude, Forensics State Champion Captain, National Honor Society, Mount Holyoke Book and Businesswoman of the Year awards, Governor’s Award — Board of Education internship, Varsity Softball, Poms, Friendship Circle Teen President, Bring Your Own Dog Fundraiser Founder. University of Michigan

JACQUELYN FOREMAN Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, International Thespian Society Presidential Ranking, Bloomfield Youth Association Award, History Day national finalist/Smithsonian display, Society of Women Engineers Certificate of Merit Award, AP Scholar with Honor, Model U.N., MTU Presidential Platinum Scholarship. Michigan Technological University

NATHAN FRANKEL Cranbrook Kingswood Varsity Football, Varsity Baseball, Orchestra, Horizons Upward Bound tutoring, CK 15-year lifer-Gold Key, Children’s International Summer Village participant. Amherst College

ELLIE FRIEDMAN

JENNA FROMMER

Walled Lake Central High School Honor Roll, Friendship Circle Leadership Board President, SNAP Inclusion Club Founder and President, UMatter, National Honor Society, Detroit Free Press contributing writer. Michigan State University

West Bloomfield High School National Honor Society, Varsity Softball, Ahavah BBG Board, 2019 All-League Softball. Michigan State University

JENNA FRIEDMAN Walled Lake Central High School UMatter/ Friendship Circle of Michigan Board, Friendship Circle volunteer, SNAPS Inclusion Club, JFamily and JCC Rising Stars: Teens Making A Difference winner. Wayne State University

ADLER FRITZ Berkley High School National Honor Society, Peer to Peer, Student Leadership, Shades of Pink, Dominican Republic Service Trip. University of Michigan

OLIVIA GELLER Walled Lake Northern High School Honor roll, Academic letters, Student and class councils, Holiday gift drive volunteer, Spanish Club, Lacrosse, Lake of the Woods counselor. Western Michigan University

JONAH GILAN Frankel Jewish Academy National Honor Society, Ambassadors Committee, AntiDefamation League Club, Fleischman intern, Bnei Akiva West Bloomfield. Wayne State University

JORDYN GLASS Bloomfield Hills High School Junior Varsity Tennis, Camp Tamarack counselor. Michigan State University continued on page 44 MAY 28 â&#x20AC;˘ 2020

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Mazel Tov! Joshua Gallatin

Your drive and determination is amazing! By dreaming big and working hard, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. We’re so proud of the man you have become and can’t wait to see what the future brings. We love you so much!!

Love, Dad and Rose

Mazel Tov! Adam & Elisha Cooper We couldn’t be more proud of you,your accomplishments, and the people you have become. You bring so much joy and love into our lives. We know you can do anything you set your mind to! Wishing you much happiness, health and success always. Adam - University of Michigan Ross Graduate Elisha - FJA Graduate - Go Blue!

We love you! Mom, Dad & Joshua Bubbie & Zayde, Nana & Zayde 44 |

MAY 28 • 2020

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RAYNA GOLD

SARAH GOLDMAN

Berkley High School BBYOEmunah, Generations of Promise participant, Source of Strength member, Berkley Drumline, JV/Varsity Volleyball, Drama Club stage manager, Pit Orchestra, Yearbook, Broadcast news and video senior award. Michigan State University

West Bloomfield High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Spanish Club, HOSA, Medical Mentorship, Peer tutor, Emunah BBG, BBYO Regional Board, Writer for The Shofar, Temple Israel graduate and Madrichim. Michigan State University

AARON GOLDSMITH JESSICA GOLDBERG North Farmington High School Sib4Sib Founder, Diller Teen Award, CocaCola Scholar, Prudential Spirit of Community state honoree, 36 under 36 honoree, Youth United Planning Committee, Teen Volunteer Corps President, Jewish Fund Teen Board Leadership Committee, Tribute from Gov. Whitmer and Rep. Ryan Berman. University of Michigan

RIKKI GOLDMAN Bloomfield Hills High School National Honor Society President, PeerCorps mentor, Cross Country, Tennis, Student leadership representative. University of Michigan

Ann Arbor Skyline High School National Honor Society, Varsity Baseball, Academic AllRegion, DECA state finalist, Beth Israel Service Madrichim, AP Scholar, U of M Regents Merit Scholar. University of Michigan

BENJAMIN GOLDSTEIN Frankel Jewish Academy All-school Vice President, Student Government, Debate Team national qualifier, Friendship Circle Boys President, Varsity Tennis, Quiz Bowl state qualifier, Hip-Hop Literature Club Founder and President. Michigan State University continued on page 46

How far can you go With a Bloomfield Hills Schools diploma?

The Class of 2020 may be home now, but soon they will spread their wings and fly! On behalf of all of the Bloomfield Hills Schools staff, we wish our graduates well in their next big chapter! Kalamazoo College Michigan State University Loyola University Northwestern University Michigan Technological University

University of Michigan Albion College

Oakland University Harvard University Wayne State U.S. Military University Academy at West Point University of Pennsylvania

New York University Cornell University Carnegie Mellon University

Duke University Wake Forest University Denison University University of Cincinnati Ohio State University

University of San Diego

Clemson University University of Utah

University of California Irvine Indiana University Texas Christian University

Rice University University of Georgia

University of Miami

This is a small sample of the post-high school plans for the 2020 senior class.

www.bloomfield.org A limited number of tuition spots are available K-12. Enrollment acceptance is based on meeting current tuition guidelines and space available.

Mazel Tov! Joshua Gallatin You are an amazing young man who surprises us at every turn. We are so proud of all that you have overcome and accomplished over the years and know that your future is shining bright. May you realize each and every one of your dreams. The sky’s the limit!! Go get ‘em!!!

With much love, Mom, Rose and Rocky

Mazel Tov!

Aria Oleshansky

Aria, we are so proud of you and all of your accomplishments. You are an amazing young lady and never cease to amaze us! Your drive will allow you to reach for the stars and make anything possible. We can’t wait to see what the future holds. Go Blue!

All our love, Mom, Brian, Dad, Marlene, Evann, Madeline, Bella, Joey, and Jonah

cap&gown 2020

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SAM GOODMAN Seaholm High School High academic honors, PeerCorps/ Repair the World Detroit mentor, Co-President of the Jewish Culture Club. University of Michigan

JESSICA GORDON North Farmington High School Buddies student mentor, Kulanu BBG RC coordinator. Michigan State University

NOA GREEN Berkley High School Honors graduate, Student Leadership, National Honor Society, Varsity Soccer, OAA Scholar-Athlete, Tri-M, Jewish Fund Teen Board, Temple Israel graduate. University of Michigan

AMANDA GRETZINGER Walled Lake Western High School International Baccalaureate Program, National Honor Society, Vice President Spanish Club, Madrichim at Temple Israel, Swim Team, Track, Model U.N., Teaches piano, BBG Chapter Ahava Sh’licha, Temple Israel volunteer, Friendship Circle volunteer, Bottomless Toy Chest. University of Michigan

ELI GREY Frankel Jewish Academy Varsity Tennis Captain twice, State Tennis Tournament semi-finalist, Coach’s Award for Tennis, Catholic AllLeague for Tennis, Varsity Baseball Captain, Bible Award. Michigan State University

NIKOLAS GRUSKIN Detroit Country Day School Student Council President, National Merit Scholar, Summa Cum Laude, Cum Laude Society, Varsity Tennis/ MHSAA All-State/ Team Captain, Varsity Bowling, Freshman Basketball, ScholarAthlete Award, Day Times writer/editor, Computer Science Club Vice President. University of Michigan continued on page 48

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MAY 28 • 2020

It’s time to turn the page and see what happens next. We know the next chapters just keep getting better and better. We love watching you write your own story, Darby!

2-4-3 with all our hearts, Mommy & Daddy Cami (your biggest fan) Muggle & Munchkin

Congratulations!

Darby Morgan Brode Krugel

Congratulations Berkley High School ood oo d lu luck in yourr fut futur future utttu u Class of 2020 Good endeavors, we’re e proud prou ud of o you! Class of 2020, you will go down in history as being the class that had the most unique senior year. You have shown strength, resilience and grace through it all. We know you will do great things!

www.berkleyschools.org/bhs

MAY 28 • 2020

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Mazel Tov!

cap&gown 2020

continued from page 46

Maya Eliana Gamer

Maya, We love you and we are very proud of you! Thank you to all of Mayaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s teachers at BJE Chicago, Solomon Schechter Day School in Chicago, Hillel & FJA for helping shape her into an impressive young woman ready to experience SUNY Binghamton!

KYLEE HADDAD Groves High School National Honor Society, Horseback riding competitor. Albion

Bubbie, Grammy & Poppa, Abba & Ema, Oz, Aryeh & Avishai

Congratulations! Rachel Kruman We are so very proud of you! We feel blessed to have you as our daughter. We wish you a bright future filled with much happiness, good health, good friends, success and love. We love you always, Mom, Dad and Jeremy

Mazel Tov!

Avery Fields

Congratulations on your accomplishments. We know the best is yet to come! Throughout your life you have been a blessing to your family and we hope all of your dreams will be fulfilled!

Love, Grammy, Poppa, Mom, Scott, Blair, Alex, David, Jaime, Chloe & Chase

Mazel Tov!

College

LUCAS HADDAD Groves High School Unified Basketball team, Track and Field, Varsity Basketball manager, LINKS Executive Board. Friendship Circle volunteer. Birmingham Adult Transition Program

NICHOLAS HADDAD Groves High School All-State Tennis Captain, Marching Band section leader, LINKS Executive Board, Friendship Circle Board, National Honor Society, National Merit Scholar. Duke University

STACEY HIRSCH Bloomfield Hills High School University of Michigan Stamps Merit Scholar, Rising Star-Teens Making a Difference 2019, Gary Burnstein Clinic Scholarship, Founder of F.A.M.S. (Families Fighting Against MS), ORT teen board founding member, National Honor Society, Youth Fellowship Temple Israel board, Temple Israel graduate, Bloomfield Youth Recognition Award, Brenda Bloomberg Award. University of Michigan

JANE HOOBERMAN Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Yearbook Editor-in-Chief, Co-President Jewish Student Alliance Club, Global Leaders, Student Advisory Committee, Varsity Poms, JV Tennis, ORT Teen Board, Shaarey Zedek Madrichim, Piano. University of Michigan

continued on page 50

Rachel Nodler

With love and pride we wish you sincere congratulations on all of your outstanding achievements! Always follow your dreams and believe in yourself.

Love, Mom, Dad, Danielle and Oscar 48 |

MAY 28 â&#x20AC;˘ 2020

FARBER HEBREW DAY SCHOOL - YESHIVAT AKIVA PROUDLY CONGRATULATES

THE CLASS OF 2020

Yonatan Barash Abraham Benjamin Ethan Bluth Micah Eizen

Ethan Katz Ezra Klausner Yaffa Magier Jeremiah Wolfe

Lev HaTorah, Midreshet Tehillah, Sha'arei Mevaseret Tzion, Torah Tech, Yeshivat HaKotel, Yeshivat Har Etzion, Yeshivat Orayta, Yeshivat Yishrei Lev

Bar Ilan University, Binghamton University, Brandeis University, Columbia University, Goucher College, IDC Herzliya, Michigan State University, Princeton University, Stony Brook University, Tel Aviv University, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The University of Maryland, The University of Michigan, Wayne State University, Yeshiva University

cap&gown 2020

continued from page 48

MARLEE HOOBERMAN

Laker Effect.

Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Yearbook Editor-inChief, Co-President Jewish Student Alliance Club, Global Leaders, Student Advisory Committee, Varsity Poms, JV Tennis, ORT Teen Board, Shaarey Zedek Madrichim, Piano. University of Michigan

gvsu.edu

AIDAN HOSKOW

Impact As a Laker you will have the adventure of a lifetime, launching a future full of positive impact. You will gain the knowledge and experience to set you apart in an atmosphere committed to your success. That’s why Grand Valley has one of the top graduation rates in the state. Plus, the Grand Finish grant rewards you with up to $1,000 for staying on track for a timely graduation. Then you will go forward to make a meaningful difference in the world. That’s the

Congratulations!

D.J. Schneider May all your dreams come true! You are such a joy in our lives! Good luck at Kalamazoo College! Love, Momma, Braddles, Anna, Gram-Gram, and Gramps

Congratulations! Brett Kovan We are so proud of our motivated, determined and athletic grandson. We wish you the best of luck reaching all of your goals! We love you always, Grandma, Grammie and Poppie

50 |

Berkley High School National Honor Society, Varsity Soccer, Varsity Basketball, DECA national

ELI HURWITZ Berkley High School Cross-Country, Student Representative for the Berkley Downtown Development Authority, Michigan Thespians Festival scholarships, PeerCorps mentor. Western Michigan University

ROSS HYSNI Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, Soccer, Basketball, Tamakwa counselor. Michigan State University

SETH HYSNI Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, Basketball team. Michigan State

competition. Michigan State University

SHAYNE HOSKOW Berkley High School Student Body President, Mindfulness Club founder, Varsity Girl’s Soccer Captain, National Honor Society. University of Wisconsin

University

ELLIOT KAFTAN Frankel Jewish Academy Jewish Fund Teen Board, Sharing to Learn volunteer, Dale Carnegie graduate, ADL, NHS, Excellence in Mathematics Award, Varsity Bowling Team, Be Well LifeStyle Center employee. University of Michigan continued on page 52

MAY 28 • 2020

Mazel Tov!

Congratulations!

Darby Morgan Brode Krugel

Precious memories of watching you grow into the brave, talented and loving person you are fills us with love and pride. We treasure the bonds of our love and the anticipation of your bright future. Wishing you health, happiness, and laughter.

Jenna Silverman

Nikolas Gruskin

Lexie Finkelstein

To my accomplished, talented grandchildren; may all your dreams come true. You have been such a joy in my life. Go Blue!!

2-4-3 Grammy & Papa

All my love, Nana Linda

Mazel Tov!

Jordyn Shapiro Jordy,

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

Yad Ezra’s leadership congratulates and thanks all the graduates for their service and commitment to helping alleviate food insecurity across our community.

www.yadezra.org (248) 548-3663 | 2850 W 11 Mile Road, Berkley 48072

We are so proud of the woman you’ve become! Your dedication to your school work, your friends and your family are a true inspiration. We can’t wait to see what you do next in Bloomington — GO BIG RED!! You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the girl who’ll decide where to go.

May ALL of your dreams come true — we love you, Mom, Dad, Jonah and Maxx MAY 28 • 2020

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Congratulations!

Drew Stone

Congratulations on your graduation! We couldn’t be more proud of all your accomplishments. We have no doubt you will continue your great success at U of M. We will be cheering you on all the way! Go blue! With love always, Mom, Dad and Sam, Grandma Annette Stone, Grandma Judy and Papa Richard Komer

Mazel Tov! Jenna Silverman

We are so proud of your many talents and accomplishments. We wish you a happy, healthy, and successful future. May all your dreams come true!

Love, Gamma & Zayde

Mazel Tov!

cap&gown 2020 ZACHARY KAM

ETHAN KATZ

Bloomfield Hills High School Varsity Tennis, National Honor Society, Friendship Circle President, Osteochamps, Future Docs, Somlyo Essay Contest Winner 2016, AllState Tennis 2020. Michigan State University

Farber Hebrew Day School/ Yeshivat Akiva Student Council, Assistant robotics teacher, Livestream coordinator of the Tanzman Tournament, National Conference of Synagogue Youth. Torah Tech, Tel Aviv

KELLER KANAT

JACK KATZ

Groves High School Varsity Cross Country, Varsity Track, Green Club Board, Student Council director of publicity, Big Brother Big Sister mentor. Bowling Green State University

Berkley High School DECA finalist twice, Varsity Baseball, Varsity Wrestling. Michigan State University

Congratulations Emily Sidney Roth We are all so very proud of you. Your hard work and big heart have contributed to your bright future ahead. Ending your senior year was not what any of us could have planned, but we get to celebrate you every day and are blessed. We all love you to the moon Emily. So excited to see you soar on your next endeavor at Michigan State University.

All our Love — Dad, Mom, Max, and Jack

Congratulations! Aidan Keenan

We are so proud of you. All your hard work paid off. You are an amazing son & we wish you the best of luck on your continuing journey. XOXO Love, Mom, Dad, Hannah & Tootie

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MAY 28 • 2020

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HANNAH KAPLAN Farmington High School Varsity letters from all three Farmington high schools, Madricha at Temple Beth El. Heidelberg University

SETH KATZMAN The Roeper School President BBYO Michigan Region, Chapter President BBYO, International Leadership Program BBYO, Varsity Golf, Black Belt American Mixed Martial Arts, Guitarist, Honors and AP curriculum. University of Michigan

continued on page 54

West Bloomfield High School Proudly Congratulates the

:%+6 &ƥƚƬƬ ƨƟ 2020 Adrian College Alabama A&M University Alabama State University Albion College Alcorn State University Alma College Animal Behavior College Aquinas College Arizona State University Arkansas Baptist College Baker College Ball State University Becker College Benedict College Bethel University Bluffton University Boston University Bowling Green State University Brandeis University Brown University Buffalo State College Butler University Calvin University Case Western Reserve University Central Michigan University Claflin University Clark Atlanta University Cleary University Clemson University Cleveland State University Coastal Carolina University Colgate University College for Creative Studies College of Wooster Columbia College Chicago Concordia University Cornerstone University Cornish College of the Arts Culver-Stockton College DePaul University Detroit Institute of Music Education Dillard University Drexel University Duquesne University Eastern Illinois University Eastern Kentucky University Eastern Michigan University Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Ferris State University Fisk University Florida A&M University Florida Southern College George Washington University Georgia Institute of Technology Grambling State University Grand Valley State University Hampton University Henry Ford College Hope College

(248) 865-6420

Where they’ve been accepted . . .

Houston Baptist University Howard University Indiana State University Indiana University Bloomington Iowa State University Jacksonville University Kalamazoo College Kenyon College Kettering University Lake Forest College Langston University Lawrence Technological University Loyola University Chicago Lynn University Macalester College Macomb Community College Marquette University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Miami University Michigan State University Michigan Technological University Mills College Missouri Western State University Morehouse College Morgan State University Murray State University Neumann University Newmont College of Computer Science Norfolk State University North Carolina A&T State University North Central Michigan College Northern Illinois University Northern Michigan University Northwestern University Northwood University Nova Southeastern University Oakland Community College Oakland University Oakwood University Oberlin College and Conservatory Ohio Northern University Ohio State University Ohio Technical College Ohio University Ohio Wesleyan University Olivet College Pace University Penn State Berks Pennsylvania State University Prairie View A&M University Purdue University Purdue University Fort Wayne Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Rhodes College Saginaw Valley State University Saint Mary’s College Savannah State University

Schoolcraft College Siena Heights College Spelman College Spring Arbor University St. Olaf College Tennessee State University Tiffin University Trine University Tulane University Tuskegee University Universal Technical Institute University of Alabama University of Alaska Fairbanks University of Arkansas Pine Bluff University of California Berkeley University of California Davis University of California Los Angeles University of Chicago University of Cincinnati University of Connecticut University of Dayton University of Delware University of Detroit Mercy University of Florida University of Georgia University of Houston University of Illinois Urbana Champaign University of Iowa University of Kentucky University of Louisville University of Miami University of Michigan Ann Arbor University of Michigan Dearborn University of Michigan Flint University of Minnesota University of Nevada Las Vegas University of Northwestern Ohio University of Oklahoma University of Pittsburgh University of Rochester University of San Francisco University of South Carolina University of Southern Mississippi University of Texas Arlington University of the Pacific University of Toledo University of Utah University of Vermont University of Wisconsin Madison University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Vincennes University Virginia Commonwealth University Washington University in St. Louis Wayne State University Western Michigan University Wilberforce University Wittenberg University Xavier University Xavier University of Louisiana

www.wbsd.org

Mazel Tov!

Jenna Silverman

Jenna, We are so proud of you. You are bright and capable of reaching all of your dreams. We wish you a future filled with good health, happiness, and success. Think Big and Go Blue! We love you, Mom, Dad, Brittany, Brad, & Bentley

Congratulations! Jeremy Kahan Congrats to our amazing son, Jeremy! You have brought us so much joy and we are so proud of you! Keep doing what you need to do so you can do what you want to do. Love you much, Mom, Dad, Hannah, Sara, Rachel and Seth

Mazel Tov!

Noa Alterman

Dear Noa, You have been a joy since birth! We have been blessed to see you develop into a delightful, loving, accomplished young woman. We love you with all our hearts, and know the future holds great promise. With love, Grandma Sharon and Papa Mickey

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ELIJAH KAYE North Farmington High School Marching BandDrumline, Farmington United Percussion Ensemble, TV-10 (Farmington Public Schools Television), Academic letters, BBYO, Adat Shalom Madrich, Safari Dog Rescue volunteer. Michigan State University

AIDAN KEENAN Frankel Jewish Academy/ North Farmington High School Oakland Youth Orchestra, Symphony Band, Varsity Wrestling, Baseball, Cross Country, Lacrosse, National Honor Society, Robotraffic, Studied abroad, Fleischman Residence volunteer, Bookstock volunteer, JARC volunteer. Purdue University

SARI KELLMAN Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Varsity Softball, OAA Scholar, Hawkeyes yearbook staff photographer, Student Ambassador, Highest GPA on Softball Team Award, Perfect score on IB Personal Project, JV Volleyball, Friendship Circle and Almost Home volunteer. Indiana University

NIA SOPHIA BRODSKY KEPES Groves High School LINKS Executive Board President, Big Brother Big Sister Captain Executive Board, Groves Assistant Athletic Trainer, National Honor Society, Jewish Fund Teen -Executive Board & Leadership Committee, Birmingham Schools Strategic Planning Committee, William Beaumont Hospital Perry Initiative, Oakland University Future Physicians Program, Groves Student Advisory Board, JCC Maccabi Detroit Teen Board, Tamarack Teen Council, Varsity Ski Team Captain, Varsity Water Polo, JV Volleyball, Pre-Med Club, Winter Walden instructor. Michigan State University

EZRA KLAUSNER Farber Hebrew Day School National Honor Society, Valedictorian, Senior Class representative, Varsity Basketball Captain, Varsity Baseball Captain, Bâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;nei Akiva, Yeshiva University National Model U.N. Yeshivat Har Etzion and Yeshiva University

continued on page 56

Near or Far, We’re Never Apart CONGRATULATIONS TO THE CLASS OF

BY ENSURING EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE, WE CHALLENGE AND INSPIRE ALL LEARNERS TO POSITIVELY IMPACT THEIR WORLD. WWW.BIRMINGHAM.K12.MI.US

Congratulations! Jacob Schlussel We’ve been your #1 fans since day one. We are so proud of all your success and your incredible achievements. We look forward to the many more amazing accomplishments coming your way. Proud today and always. We love you so much. Mom, Dad, Lindsay, and Mia

Mazel Tov! Jessica Goldberg Mazel Tov Jessica! You are a superstar and we are so proud of you. You will shine brightly at Ross Business School and continue to do amazing things. “Be bold, be courageous, be your best.” —Gabrielle Giffords

Lots of Love, Mom, Dad, Ryan, and Goldie

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Mazel Tov! Barri Wolf

You continually make us proud, keep shining your light, we look forward to sharing your journey ahead.

We love you, Grandma, Grandpa, Bubbie, Beepa, Mom, Dad,Jordyn, Lindsey and Frankie

Congratulations! Ben Klein Congratulations! We are so proud of the amazing person you have become and all that you have accomplished. We wish you much success and happiness at MSU. The best is yet to come! Love you always, Mom, Gary, Josh, Grammie and Papa

Congratulations! Alex Aisner

Alex, We could not be prouder of you. Our hearts are filled with love and joy because of you. May you find happiness and success in all that you attempt in life. WB was a great launching pad. We know you will grow and hope you have an incredible experience at UofM. All of our love, Mama, Abba, Maya, Daniel, Safta, Yaya

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BEN KLEIN

HANNAH KOVINSKY

Groves High School Varsity Baseball, National Honor Society, DECA Vice President, Tamarack Teen Board. Michigan State University

Berkley High School Brightest and Best, Honor Roll, Founder and President of STEM Club, Executive President of Mu Alpha Theta, Peer 2 Peer board, Varsity Robotics programmer, Code Blue teacher, Math tutor, Detroit Zoo volunteer. University of Michigan

MOLLY KOHL Groves High School National Honor Society, Symphony Orchestra, Division I ratings Michigan School Band and Orchestra Assoc. District and State Solo & Ensemble, Electric Mayhem technical assistant, Groves Performing Arts Company tech crew. Kalamazoo College

BRETT KOVAN Groves High School MHSAA Tennis State and Regional Champion, National Honor Society, Varsity Tennis, DECA Club, Interact Club. Michigan State University

ELAN KRAKOFF Frankel Jewish Academy Junior Class President, Senior Class President, National Honor Society, Teen Board, Video production teacher, Varsity Tennis, 8 Over 80 speaker, CTO of WeCareDetroit, Youth Volunteer Leadership Award. Michigan State University

JULIE KRASNICK Berkley High School Varsity Girls Tennis Co-Captain, Co-Founder of BaGals, Teacher for fifth-grade coding club (Code Blue), Co-President of Peer 2 Peer, National Honor Society Committee Leader, Mu Alpha Theta and Science National Honor Society, OAA Sportsmanship and ScholarAthlete Award, Optimist Award. University of Michigan continued on page 58

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Congratulations! Henry Freeman We are so proud of your hard work and accomplishments. We know you will make this world a better place. Always follow your dreams. Go Green! Love, Mom, Dad, Jack & Stella Bubbie, Poppa, Nona and Nono

Mazel Tov!

Alexa Cutler Hillel Day School Graduate 2020 A New Adventure Awaits You at North Farmington High School

With Love, Baba & Zay, Grandma & Grandpa

Mazel Tov!

Sam Berlin

Your success has made us very proud. Graduating with honors from Berkley High is quite an achievement. We wish you a great experience at the University of Wisconsin. Go Badgers!

Love, Bubbie and Papa

MEL DRYMAN Raised in Detroit, Experienced in Arizona

Your Professional & Dedicated ARIZONA REALTOR

Mobile: (480) 239-8686 mel.dryman@azmoves.com

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ASHLEY KRAUTHAMER West Bloomfield High School Summa Cum Laude, 3-sport varsity athlete, Temple Israel graduate and Madrichim. University of Michigan

ELISE KRAVITZ North Farmington High School Oakland Schools Technical Campus statewide welding competition, Marching Band Color Guard Co-Captain, Recycling Crew volunteer. Washtenaw Community College

DARBY KRUGEL Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, Studio A Company, National Honor Society, Editor-in-Chief Hawkeye newspaper, Math Club President, History Day national finalist, Varsity Poms, Jewish Fund Teen Board, National Merit commended student, BBYO: Outstanding Achievement Leadership Award; Michigan Region and Aliyah MIT Mom, YLC coordinator. Cornell University

JESSE KRUGEL Walled Lake Western High School IB diploma candidate, National Honor Society Vice President, French Honor Society, Varsity Tennis Captain, Scholar- Athlete, Wind Ensemble Tubist, Link Crew Leader, Honor Guard, Temple Israel Youth Group Board and Madrich, Camp George staff, Jewish Fund Teen Board. University of Michigan

RACHEL KRUMAN Bloomfield Hills High School Varsity Poms, ScholarAthlete Award, BBYO, community volunteer. Michigan State University

BENJAMIN LAVETTER Troy Athens High School JV and Varsity Bowling, JV Tennis, Co-President Spanish Club, Math Club, Computer Club, Game Club. Michigan State University

Each Office Independently Owned & Operated

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Congratulations! Congratulations! Sam Wittenberg Dear Sam, It was evident to us all from day one that you were an extremely bright, charismatic, and handsome boy. It is no surprise that you have grown up to be a bright, charismatic, and handsome young man. We are proud of you for your acceptance to Ross Business School, and know that it is the fulfillment of the first of many dreams. Thank you for being such a great role model to your brothers and cousins. We love you and Go Blue! Love, Uncle Ricky, Auntie Ta-Ta, Ben, and Maddie

Mazel Tov!

Olivia Geller

Mitch Blackman Mitch - We are incredibly proud of the man you have become. Your kindness, humility, and humor have touched and brightened so many lives. You have worked incredibly hard to get into the Broad College of Business at MSU. Go Green! Love Forever, Dad, Sari, Matt, Drew & Brandon Bubbie & Zaydie, Mimi & Papa

Congratulations! Max Muchnick

We are so proud of you and all your accomplishments! You are intelligent, kind and caring and we know you will be successful in whatever you choose. We can’t wait to see your future!

You have made us both so proud, and from the day you were born, you have filled our life with so much joy and happiness! Good luck at U of M. We can’t wait to watch your dreams come true!!!

Love you always, Mom, Dad, Sammie, Nickie, Ginger and Fletcher

We love you so much! Mimi Carole & Papa Larry

Congratulations!

Jacob Banooni

Ian Sandler Bowen

We are so proud of you and all of your accomplishments. There is no limit to what you can achieve. We wish you good luck in all you do. Here you go: Learn, Serve, Grow. With so much love, Mom, Jo, Hunter & Yaya

You have been a joy in our lives. We wish you the best. We are so proud of you and know you will have a wonderful future. Love, Uma & Opa and Mom & Dad MAY 28 • 2020

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Congratulations!

Garrett Folbe Garrett, I am so proud of you for all of your achievements at Michigan and wish you much success in the future! Love, Bubbie

Congratulations! Eli Grey Eli, Congratulations on your graduation from Frankel Jewish Academy and wishing you much success at Lyman Briggs at Michigan State University! Love, Bubbie and MeMe

Congratulations! Brett Davidson We are so proud of your dedication and determination and can’t wait to see all the great things you accomplish at Michigan State University. We love you! Mom, Dad, Lacey and Seth

Congratulations! Jonathan Grey Jonathan, We are so proud of you for all your accomplishments at Michigan and wish you much success in the future! Love, MeMe and Bubbie

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KAITLYN LUCKOF

MARI LYNN

Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Student Leadership, Newspaper Editorin-Chief, Student Body President, Varsity Poms, Scholar Athlete, Count Me In Club President, Global Leaders, Student Advisory Committee, ORT Teen Board, Temple Israel YFTI member. University of Michigan

Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Student Ambassador, Principal’s Advisory Committee, Varsity Poms, Varsity Track, Scholar Athlete, Hawkeye Senior Writer, MIPA Award, Shir Shalom Temple Youth, Maccabi Athlete, ORT Teen Board, Studio A Competition Dance Team, Beaumont volunteer, Nordstrom Fashion Ambassador, Interact Club, Medical Careers Club. Ohio State University

HANNA LUPOVITCH Groves High School Varsity Tennis Captain, Big Brother Big Sister mentor, USY Regional Religion and Education VP, National Honor Society. University of Michigan

ASHLEY LYNCH West Bloomfield High School Michigan State University

ERIN MATTLER Groves High School Student Congress, JV Tennis Co-Captain, Forgotten Harvest volunteer, Groves Blood Drive, Groves Garage Sale, Birmingham Public Schools Fun Run for the Middle School kids, Passion to Play Tennis Award, Captain’s Tennis Award. Michigan State University

DALIA MICHAELSON Berkley High School President Kulanu BBYO, UMatter Board, National Honor Society. University of Virginia

Mazel Tov! AUSTIN MILLER

ELAINE MORTON

Walled Lake Central High School National Honor Society, AP Scholar, Tzavah AZA, Third Degree Black Belt in Martial Arts. Michigan State University

West Bloomfield High School Summa Cum Laude, Symphony Orchestra, Varsity Snowboard Team, Temple Kol Ami Sunday High School Program, Jewish Senior Life essential employee. College Creative Studies Detroit

ALEXANDRA MISON Walled Lake Northern High School Magna Cum Laude, National Honor Society, Student Council, Class Council, Students Leading Students, President of AP Psychology Club, JV & Varsity Pom Dance Team, Studio A Competitive Dance Team, BBYO, Maccabi participant, Star Trax dancer, Community Service/volunteer Michigan State University

MAX MORGANROTH Seaholm High School Founder Student LLC (Time Management iOS App), Founder Birmingham Tutors, Jewish Fund Teen Board, Classical piano student, Michigan Region Treasurer BBYO, Best Overall Team Wharton Leadership in the Business World, American Mensa Honor Society, Seaholm JV Golf, AP Scholar Award. University of Pennsylvania

LEAH MORTON West Bloomfield High School National Honor Society, International Thespian Society President, Company manager and designer for Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association, Student producer for theater, LINKS special education assistant, Social work internships. Wayne State University

ROSE MOURADIAN Berkley High School Ruach BBG President, SkillsUSA Leadership Assessment Award, Criminal Justice NOCTI Assessment top score. Michigan Technological University

Elliot Kaftan Your successes are one of our biggest joys as grandparents. Congratulations with love and pride for the special person you have become.

With Love, Grandma Carole & Barry GG & Papa Alby Papa Mel & Nana Grandma She

Congratulations! Adam Karp We’re so proud of you and all your dedication and hard work through the years. You continually make us proud. May all your dreams and wishes come true! Much love, Mom, Dad & Brenda, Jaime, Allison, Nana & Papa z”l, Grammy & Grandpa

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Congratulations!

Johnny Samyn We are proud of you! Aunt Pam and Uncle Mike

Congratulations! Andrew Schulman Mr. President, You are a delight to all who know you. Opportunities await at State! We couldn’t be prouder. With tons of love from Mom, Dad, Stephanie, Justin and your Grandparents

Mazel Tov! Kaela Bernard We are so proud and will continue to look forward to you reaching your dreams!!! Love you so much!!!

Mom, Dad, Alexa, Carly, & Jace

Mazel Tov! Maya Goldsmith We are so proud of you and all you have accomplished. You are such a blessing in our lives. May all your dreams come true and keep shining your light!

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MAX MUCHNICK

HALLE RANDOLPH

Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, National Honor Society, President ORT America Michigan Region Teen Board, Jewish Student Alliance Club, Creator of 100wordreviewer — an Instagram account providing movie and TV show reviews. University of Michigan

Groves High School Varsity Softball (Captain), National Honor Society, National Art Honor Society, Interact Club, LINKS, GPAC, Film Club, Volleyball, Big Brother Big Sister, Bookstock, Matthew Bittker Foundation, Presidential Volunteer Service Award. DePaul University

ARIA OLESHANSKY Groves High School National Honor Society, President of Interact Club, LINKS Board, Ambassador for DECA, ORT Teen Board, Treasurer BBYO Savage Chapter, Semi-finalist for Coca-Cola Scholarship, Built and donated to Little Free Libraries. University of Michigan

HANNAH RESNICK Frankel Jewish Academy Varsity Volleyball Captain, AllCatholic Award, Varsity Bowling MVP Award, Varsity Tennis, Varsity Soccer, Dale Carnegie Training, Club Volleyball, Force Volleyball Academy assistant coach, Ahavah BBG. Lawrence Technological University

RUSSELL PRESSER Frankel Jewish Academy Varsity Tennis, Varsity Baseball, Tennis regionals qualifier, Camp Hermelin fundraiser, Detroit’s Thanksgiving Day Parade volunteer. University of Arizona

JAKOB RINKE Lamphere High School All around percussion Symphony Band, Drum kit Jazz Band, Center Marimba in Marching Band, Assisted at various food pantries. MIAT College of Technology

Love always, Papa and Softa continued on page 64

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Mazel Tov! Lauren Schostak Lauren, We are so proud of the lovely young woman that you have become. We know you will continue to change the world for the better. Always shine your light!

With much love and admiration, Mom, Dad, Danielle, Seth, Josh & Maggie

Congratulations! Jordyn Glass Jo, we are beyond proud of you and all you have accomplished. Wishing you all the best entering the next chapter of your life adventure. Love you soooo much, Nana, Poppi, Marley, Brodie

Congratulations! Sydney Blau Congratulations on your well deserved success and high school graduation. You continually make us proud and your hard work and perseverance has paid off. We look forward to sharing your journey ahead at Michigan State University and beyond. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for you. Love — Mom, Dad, Gabrielle, Hershey, Grandma Louise, Papa Bob and Grandma Mimi

Congratulations! Justin Schulman, BBA Ross Business School University of Michigan, Honors From your tutoring business at 8 years old to Kayne Anderson in California. Stay humble and kind! Love, Mom, Dad, Steph, Andrew and your Grandparents

Congratulations! Michael Gould Mazel Tov on graduating from Grand Valley State University. We are proud of all your accomplishments. Love Mom, Dad, Adam & Bailey

Congratulations! Isaac Smith Academic Superstar; Transcendent Troubadour; Judaic Scholar. Recipient of a Michigan State University Alumni Distinguished Scholarship. The apple of our Pi. We are very proud of you.

Love Dad, Nana, Papa, Mindy, Jenny, Alec and Hunter

Mazel Tov!

Hannah Stryk

We are so proud of you and all of your accomplishments at FJA. We wish you endless happiness and success as you continue your exciting journey at the University of Michigan. We Love You!!! Mom, Dad, Bubbie & Papa Weinfeld, Grandma Stryk

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Congratulations! Eli Rubin Mazel Tov on reaching this milestone. May you go on to great accomplishments. With love, Papa Barry & Grandma Carole

Congratulations! Elliot Kaftan Our wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to. Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small and that you never need to carry more than you can hold. There will be so many first experiences to look forward to next year. The University of Michigan is lucky to have you. Go get ‘em baby boy. You make us very proud. Love, hugs and kisses, Mommy, Daddy, Amelia & Asher

Mazel Tov! Jacob Ellenbogen We are so proud of you and all that you have accomplished so far! We can’t wait to see where the future takes you. We hope you treasure every moment of your time and travels with Kivunim and Michigan. Go Blue!

With love, Dad, Mom, Henry, Laura, Chloe and Manny

Congratulations! Ari Belchinsky We are so very proud of you. May your future be filled with health and happiness and may all your dreams come true! GO BLUE!!! Love Grandma, Papa, Lisa, Mom, Dad, and Lola

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EMILY ROTH

LAELA SAULSON

Lakeland High School Varsity Poms, DECA, Honor Student, President of Savage BBYO, Tamarack Camp counselor, Friendship Circle volunteer. Michigan State University

Frankel Jewish Academy Studio A Competitive Dancer, Camp Hermelin volunteer, Co-President of the Mental Health and Happiness Club, Interior Design Group Leader, Carrie Long Interiors intern, Student Ambassador. Michigan State University

MIA RUBENSTEIN Berkley High School National Honor Society, Science National Honor Society, Juliana’s Academy of Dance competitive dancer, BBYO. University of Michigan

ELI RUBIN Bloomfield Hills High School Senior Honors, National Honor Society. Michigan State University

IAN SANDLERBOWEN Berkley High School First-degree black belt, Symphony Orchestra, Blue Lake International Youth Orchestra, ACLU Summer Advocacy. University of Michigan

JACOB SCHLUSSEL Berkley High School Honor Roll, National Honor Society, Varsity Tennis Captain, AllLeague, Varsity Golf Captain, OCAA Scholar-Athlete for tennis & golf, Berkley Bear Hall-ofFame, Jewish Fund Teen Board, Tamarack Teen Board Chair, DECA State of Michigan winner. University of Michigan

ANDREW SCHULMAN Frankel Jewish Academy Student Body President, Varsity Tennis, Catholic League High School Debate national qualifier, YUNMUN Best Delegate Award, JTS Ahavat Torah Award, WeCareDetroit volunteer, CTeen, Friendship Circle, Birds Aren’t Real Detroit. Michigan State University

continued on page 66

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MAY 28 • 2020

Congratulations!

Jonah Gilan

Asher Schreiber

Mazel Tov! We are so proud of you, and we can’t wait to see your dreams realized!

Mazel Tov! We are so proud of you. You are a remarkable young man who will surely impact the world in wonderful ways. May all your dreams come true at St. Olaf College and beyond! Love Always, Abba, Mom & Dan Eliana, Grace & Shaya

Love, Mom, Dad, Eden, Savta, Bubbie & Zayde

Mazel Tov! Carlie Suris

Congratulations Carlie! You continue to amaze and inspire everyone who meets you. We are all so proud of who you are. With enormous pride and Love, Mom, Dad, Eli, Ari, Meema, Your Grandparents, all the Aunts, Uncles, cousins, friends and Cadee. Bravo!

Mazel Tov! Phillip Weinstein

Mazel Tov to our Grandson Phillip! We are proud of your big leap from Groves to the University of Michigan – College of Engineering. May all of your dreams and aspirations come true.

Love your grandparents, Judith and Sydney Weinstein & Reinart and Dr. Eugene Gelzayd

Congratulations! Kaitlyn Luckoff We are so proud of you and all you have accomplished! Our admiration reaches far beyond the classroom, you are very special, beautiful on the inside and out! We wish you good health and happiness always Go Blue! We love you so much Mom, Dad, Andrew, Maddi, Matthew and Jason

Congratulations! Phillip Weinstein We are so proud of you and can’t wait to see what your future holds. Continue to follow your dreams and success will be yours. Good luck at University of Michigan – College of Engineering. We love you, Mom, Dad (Go Bucks!), Matthew, Sonic, Finn

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Ava Swider You have amazed us with your diligence and hard work. From captain of your equestrian team to graduating a semester early from Bloomfield Hills High School, and already beginning your college career in Fiji and New Zealand and so much more! You are gifted with talent, intelligence and beauty…we look forward to watching your future unfold.

All of our love — Mom, Dad, Sophia, Chad and Bubbe & Zayde

Congratulations! Marlee Elias Marlee, We’re so proud of you and all you’ve accomplished. MSU is lucky to have you. Go Green! We love you! Mom, Dad, Matthew and Josh

Congratulations! Tom Sherman We are so proud of you and all that you have accomplished! We couldn’t be luckier to have you as our son and brother. Good luck at UofM Engineering. We can’t wait to see where life takes you! All of our love, Mom, Dad, AJ & Addie

Congratulations! Alyse Belkin Congratulations on graduating from Seaholm. You have a wonderful future ahead of you with so many dreams to be fulfilled. We wish you all the best at Michigan State! Love, Mom, Dad, Jackie, Stephanie, Murphy and Kimmy

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BENNY SHAEVSKY

THOMAS SHERMAN

Frankel Jewish Academy University of Michigan Regents Scholar, Rising Stars: Teens Making a Difference, NCJW Youth Award, ADL Club President, Jewish Fund Teen Board, Adat Shalom Teen Volunteer Corps Board, Varsity Tennis (Catholic League AllAcademic/All-Scholastic), Tech4Seniors founder, FARE national presenter/Teen Advisory Board, Excellence Awards: Rabbinics/Bible/AP Government/Minyan Leadership. University of Michigan

Bloomfield Hills High School New York Times Essay Contest semi-finalist, 100 Mensches Essay Contest winner, Tzavah AZA, Varsity Tennis, Drumline Section Leader, Champion Quizbowl Team Captain and Founder, Temple Beth El Madrich, National Merit Scholar Commended, National Honor Society. University of Michigan

EDEN SHERMAN Groves High School National Honor Society, Varsity Swimming Captain, Varsity Water Polo Captain, Academic All State, LINKS Executive Board. University of Michigan

SARA SHERMAN Groves High School National Honor Society, Varsity Softball, ScholarAthlete. Michigan State University

SAM SHIENBAUM Groves High School Baseball, Basketball, Football. U.S. Military Academy West Point

SCOTT SIEGAL Groves High School Evan Shapiro AZA President, Founding member Groves Model U.N. Chapter. Kent State University

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Mazel Tov! Dalia Michaelson

Congratulations! Haley Mozen

Take pride in how far you’ve come. Have faith in how far you can go. Enjoy your journey at University of Virginia. We’re so proud of you!

We are so proud of who you are AIM HIGH Live the life you LOVE!

All our love, Grandma and Grandpa Nana and Papa

We love you Mom, Dad and Clover

Mazel Tov! Isaac Smith

We are so proud of you and all that you've achieved. You have already accomplished so much and you've only just begun. You have such a bright future ahead of you. The sky's the limit!

With much love, Mom, Grandma, Uncle Alan & Aunt Cameron, Uncle Bob & Aunt Laura, Taylor, Trevor, Noah, Vida, Eden, Haley and Cameron

Congratulations!

Mazel Tov! Bridget & Julia Spilkin

Both of you have made us double proud and twice as happy. Good Luck at Michigan. Go Blue!! Love you bunches, Mom & Dad

Congratulations!

Courtney Klerkx

Joshua Dubin

Congratulations on graduating from MSU— and with honors! We are so proud of you and all you have accomplished. May all your dreams come true.

We wish you much success pursuing your goal of architectural engineering at Lawrence Technological University. May your future hold everything you can imagine-and more. So proud.

We love you, Grandma, mom and dad

So much love always, Nanny & Grampy

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Austin Mil er Proudly wishing you continued success in your future at Michigan State University, Lyman Briggs.

Love, Mom, Dad, Logan, Nana Bobbi, Grandma Sharon, Grandpa Harold

Mazel Tov! Ashley Krauthamer

You make us proud every single day. Your determination and drive is endless. Your future is so bright and we cannot wait to watch you fulfill your dreams.

All our Love — Mom, Dad, Ryan, & Deb

Congratulations!

JENNA SILVERMAN Bloomfield Hills High School Summa Cum Laude, AP Scholar, OAA Scholar-Athlete Varsity Tennis, Varsity Tennis Captain, Varsity Tennis 2018 Division 14 Singles State Champion, 2017 Miami Maccabi Games Gold Medalist, Yearbook Sports Editor, Math Club President, National Honor Society Group Leader. University of Michigan

BRIDGET SPILKIN Groves High School University of Michigan

JULIA SPILKIN Groves High School University of Michigan

Aria and Joey Congratulations on your graduation from Groves High School. We are so proud of all your accomplishments and we know you will have much success at U of M. Love Mimi & Poppy

Mazel Tov! Matthew Berg We are so proud of you and can’t wait to see all that you’ll accomplish in your years at Grand Valley. We know you’ll be “flipping” awesome in anything you do.

With tons of love — Mom, Morgan, Grampy & Roxi

Congratulations! Samuel Yarsike Congratulations MSU graduate. We hope all your dreams come true. You make us all proud. With love, Helaine, Andrea, Brian and Courtney

Congratulations!

Jacob Schlussel

High school graduation is an extraordinary milestone along your journey of life. We celebrate with you. All our love, Nonnie and Papa

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ISAAC SMITH West Bloomfield High School National Merit Scholar, Alumni Distinguished Scholar (MSU), AP National Scholar, MSVMA Solo/Ensemble Excellent Rating, Jewish News Rising Star, MCUSY Religion Education Vice-President. Michigan State University

ALEXANDRA STAPLETON West Bloomfield High School Co-President Yoga Club, Art Club Treasurer, National Honor Society, West Bloomfield Schools & Coalition volunteer, Temple Beth El graduate. Michigan State University

BROOKE SOPER Okemos High School National Honor Society, Academic tutor, Greater Lansing Temple Youth membership director/board, Varsity Cross Country and Track (captain, All-League, AllRegion, All-Academic and fouryear state qualifier), Co-founder/co-race director of annual 5K race for charity. Western Michigan University

DREW STONE Berkley High School Summa Cum Laude, DECA State and International qualifier, National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta National Math Honor Society, Tamarack Teen Board. University of Michigan

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Oakland Early College Proudly Congratulates the

OEC CLASS OF 2020 Where they’ve been accepted . . .

Oakland Early College www.oaklandearlycollege.org Orchard Ridge Campus, Farmington Hills Oakland Early College (OEC) is a “hybrid” school combining the best elements of high school and Oakland Early College college. OEC students attend school on Oakland Hybrid High School and College Community College’s Orchard Ridge campus, Oakland County residents can earn a high school engaging in an exciting college-preparatory diploma AND an Associate degree or 60 credcurriculum taught by teachers from award-winning its towards a Bachelor’s degree - tuition free - at :HVW %ORRPƓHOG 6FKRRO 'LVWULFW. OEC students Oakland Early College. OEC blends high school graduate with their high school diplomas, innovative andeducational college into a 5 year program combining high and professional experiences in a small school graduation and two years of college... school environment, and up to 60 transferable credits towards their undergraduate degree and/or an Associate Degree from Oakland Community College.

Ave Maria University Baker College Ball State University Barnard College of Columbia Bowling Green State University Case Western Reserve University Central Michigan University Clemson University Colorado State University DePaul University Eastern Michigan University Eckerd University Fashion Institute of Technology Ferris State University Full Sail University Grand Valley State University Hamline University Henry Ford Community College Howard University Illinois Institute of Technology Illinois Wesleyan University Kalamazoo College Lawrence Technological University Madonna University Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michigan State University Michigan Technical University Northern Michigan Oakland Community College Oakland University Oakwood University Ohio State University Saginaw Valley State University University of Chicago University of Detroit Mercy University of Hawaii University of Illinois at Chicago University of Miami University of Michigan Ann Arbor University of Michigan Dearborn University of Michigan Flint University of Michigan STAMPS University of New Hampshire University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill University of Oregon University of Pittsburgh University of Tampa Wayne State University Western Michigan University Yale University

Mazel Tov! Sam Wittenberg Dear Sam, Having a grandchild is a blessing in life that is never overrated, and even gets better with time. Since birth, we’ve watched you approach each milestone with passion, focus, and discipline. Your graduation from Cranbrook with honors, and your acceptance to the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, validates your determination. It is with joy, expressed by thunderous applause, and repeated cheers of “Go Blue”, that we watch you begin the next journey of your life! We quell nachas!!! We pray for good health.

Love forever, Bubbie and Zayde

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Mazel Tov!

cap&gown 2020 JACOB STROME West Bloomfield High School Varsity Tennis, Baseball JV and Varsity. Michigan Technological

Mari Lynn Take pride in how far you’ve come, have faith in how far you can go, but don’t forget to enjoy the journey! We are so proud of you and thrilled you chose to pursue Pharmacy at The Ohio State University! Go Buckeyes!

With All Our Love xoxox: Mom, Dad & Brendan

Congratulations!

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University

HANNAH STRYK Frankel Jewish Academy National Honor Society, Captain Girls Varsity Tennis, Tennis MVP award, Tennis All-Academic Award, BBYO Building Entrepreneurship participant, Tamarack Camps Teen Council, FJA Student Ambassador, 8 Over 80 Award presenter. University of Michigan

CARLIE SURIS

Max Muchnick We are so proud of you and all you have accomplished! We know that a big and exciting future lies ahead of you, and we cannot wait to watch it unfold. Wishing you much happiness and success always. Go blue! We love you!!! Mom, Bubba, & Bella

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Groves High School Temple Israel graduate, UMatter, Yad Ezra Giving Gardens volunteer, LINKS, Ruach BBG. Project Search Internship at Henry Ford candidate

ARYE TAYLOR West Bloomfield High School Honor Society, Relay for Life volunteer. University to be decided

HOPE TUSHMAN Groves High School Editor-inchief of the school newspaper, Forensics state finalist, Groves Performing Arts Company, National Honor Society, Green Club and Ambassadors. University of Michigan

OLIVIA WARREN Walled Lake Western High School ScholarAthlete, Academic AllState, Honorable Mention all-state basketball, All-Conference, National Honor Society, Unsung Hero Award Basketball, Varsity athlete, Student Activities, LINKS Crew. Alma College

RACHEL WEINGARDEN North Farmington High School National Honor Society, LINKS Crew, Class Board, Student Senate, Ahavah BBG, Flex Point Performing Arts Center competitive dancer. University of Michigan continued on page 72

Mazel Tov! Eric Adelson We are so proud of your accomplishments at FJA. Wishing you the best of luck at MSU. May all your dreams come true!

We love you, Mom, Dad, Ashleigh, Num, Papa and Grandma

Mazel Tov! Emily Sherman Congratulations on all your hard work! We are so proud of all you have accomplished, especially during this difficult time! Never stop dreaming as you continue your journey at The University of Arizona - Bear Down!!

Love Mom, Dad, Samantha and Justin

Mazel Tov! Wil Bloomberg We are so proud of all of your accomplishments, both academically and athletically. Whatever comes next, we will always be your biggest fans! We wish you good luck and success at Michigan State!

We love you! Mom, Dad & Allison Bubbe & Grandpa Bubbie & Papa

Congratulations! Jake Katzman Congratulations on your Medical Degree! You are going to be an awesome Doctor! We are so proud of you! We love you, Dad & Bridget, Mom & David Alexa, Seth, Amanda & Ryan Derek & Ethan

Congratulations! Eli Grey We are so proud of you and all that you have accomplished! The sky is the limit and we know that this is just the beginning of many more achievements to come! Mazel Tov! We love you! Love, Mom, Dad, Jonathan, Erin, Ethan, and Winnie!

Congratulations! Joey Olson Joey O, We are all so proud of you! We wish you all the best exploring your all your strengths, talents and the great outdoors at Northern Michigan University. All our Love and Mazel Tov! Mom and Dad, Max, Lynne, Omi and Papa Olson, Nanny and Papa Levine, and all of your aunts, uncles and cousins. MAY 28 â&#x20AC;˘ 2020

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Congratulations! Benny Shaevsky The destiny of hard work is always success. We wish you good health, happiness and future success at the University of MichiganRoss School of Business. We could not be more proud of you! Go Blue!! All our love, Mom, Dad, Harry and Franklin Grandma and Grandpa Konikow Grandma Lois and Grandpa Mark Shaevsky

Congratulations! Alex Bean Dear Alex, Mazel Tov on your graduation!! We are over the moon for you! Remember to aim high, follow your intuition, be courageous and bold and always keep your sense of humor. We cannot wait to see where your journey takes you! We love you!! Love, Mom, Dad, Jacob and Catherine

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cap&gown 2020

continued from page 70

REBECCA WEISBERG

SAM WITTENBERG

North Farmington High School National Honor Society President, Certified Emergency Responder, Recognition and honors at the state H.O.S.A. competition, Varsity Lacrosse. Michigan State University

Cranbrook Kingswood Honors, Deanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s List, AP Scholar, Gold Key President and Ambassador, Varsity Golf, Jewish Teen Board, JARC volunteer. University of Michigan

MAX YOLLES ETHAN WEITZMAN Groves High School Varsity Tennis, DECA, National Honor Society, Youth Federation at Temple Israel, Scholar-Athlete, Youth Action Board, Orchards Youth Board. Michigan State University

The Roeper School CCS Merit Scholar, Roeper/CCS Dual Enrollment student, Gay/ Straight Alliance Group, Spirit Week Committee member, Jewish Family Service volunteer, Gleaners volunteer. College for Creative Studies

BRETT WELFORD

BRADLEY ZOUSMER

West Bloomfield High School National Honor Society, Medical Mentorship, Kishon AZA, Student volunteer at Henry Ford Hospital. Michigan State University

Bloomfield Hills High School Student Council Co-President, Varsity Basketball Captain, Varsity Lacrosse Captain, National Society of High School Scholars, Student Athlete Leadership Committee, National Honor Society, Summa Cum Laude. University of Michigan

Congratulations! Brett Kovan We are beyond proud of all your hard work and accomplishments. We look forward to what the future holds for you. You never cease to amaze us! With love and pride today and always! Mom, Dad, Sidrah & Nolen Go Green!

Congratulations! Brandon Mostyn Mazel Tov on your Bachelors degree in Journalism with a minor in Sport Journalism from MSU. We are so proud of your accomplishments, working for MSU Athletics to one of the managers for this years MSU Baseball team. Sports has always been your passion, We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to see where if takes you next. Love, Mom Dad, Ethan and Shayla

Congratulations! Morgan Mattler The best is yet to come.... We love you so much, Bubbie and Papa

Congratulations! Eric Becker We hope your dreams take you to the most special places your heart has ever known. We are so grateful to call you our son and big brother. We are so proud of all your accomplishments and incredible determination. Georgia is lucky to have you. Dream big Eric... the best is yet to come. Good luck at the University of Georgia!!! Go Dawgs! We love you! Mom, Dad, Ryan, Ellory Bailey & Barney MAY 28 â&#x20AC;˘ 2020

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Congratulations! Congratulations! Blake Zamler We are over the moon proud of our 2020 graduate! We wish you nothing less than health, happiness and a bright future. We know that whatever college you choose will be the right one for you! We love you! Mom, Dad, Ari and Breezy

Jane & Marlee Hooberman Congratulations Jane & Marlee! We are so proud of you! You have always worked so hard to make your dreams come true. There is nothing the two of you can’t do. We are so excited to see what your futures hold. Go Blue x 2! We love you, Mom, Dad & Lily

Congratulations! Congratulations! Scott Siegal Scott — We are so proud of all you have accomplished. From Hillel to Groves to Kent State, your future is bright and we are excited to see what you do next. The best is yet to come. Love, Mom, Dad, Abby, and Diego

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Ethan Weitzman Ethan, although this year didn’t end as planned, we know it will be one you will never forget. You make us so proud every day and we can’t wait to see what your future holds. Go Green!! Love Always, Mom, Dad, Drew and Stella

for college students by college students

May 28, 2020/5 Sivan 5780

Leadership in the Time of COVID-19 Uncertain future leaves students planning for the fall one step at a time. Julia Levy } jewish@edu writer

n March 11, I was about six weeks into a semester abroad in Budapest, Hungary. Restaurants and pubs began to close, and my new friends and I decided to treat this night like it was our last. We wanted to try and enjoy every second we had left, which we foolishly thought would actually last many more weeks. A few hours later, we found out that this night would, in fact, be our last night abroad and we would immediately begin the journey home to the United States. At first, I was hit with shock and sadness, like any 20-year-old would be. Once I finally made it home, I took time to reflect on how lucky I was to be able to go in the first place. A week after I came home, all my friends

from Michigan State University started to leave campus and head home as well, due to the university’s decision to move classes online. Previously, I had mostly thought that the COVID-19 pandemic had only affected Europe, but seeing my friends leave East Lansing put everything into perspective. Now my friends’ lives and community at school were forced to be shut down as well? I started to think about MSU Hillel, an organization and community that has given me so much since my first days at MSU. Through my involvement, I was elected to the Jewish Student Union’s Executive Board as the vice president of community programming. As a student leader, I understand the hard work that goes into planning events

MSU HILLEL

Participating in Good Deeds Day is a highlight of the academic year for Jewish students. Pictured here are Julia Levy, 20, Marlboro, N.J.; Danielle Contorer, 20, and Sammi Elkus, 20, both from Huntington Woods, Mich.

and programs for the Jewish community on campus, and I was distressed for my peers who put in so much effort to make the Spring 2020 semester exciting and innovative. I knew if I had been in their shoes, I would have been devastated. Through my involvement and passion for Jewish life on campus, I made the decision to run to be the president of the Jewish Student Union for the 2020-2021 academic year. Shortly after everyone settled into their quarantine, elections were held, and I was selected as president of the organization that meant so much to me. I worked extremely hard to get here and cannot wait to see what next year brings for Hillel and for myself as a leader. Through early meetings with the new Jewish Student Union Executive Board, we’ve discussed the upcoming year, but it is difficult and exhausting to think about the future. As a student leader, I find myself wondering what will happen if classes are online in the fall. What if we are not able to have gatherings of more than 50 people? How will we have Shabbat or plan big events that students look forward to every year? I think about these questions daily because serving my community might look different than I had previously imagined. But all we can do is take everything one step at a time. I am continuously trying to come up with ways to help my community, whether that’s trying to come up with online programs and events or working on a game plan for all scenarios in the fall. Knowing I have a great support system around me and people who are willing to help, like the rest of our executive board and MSU Hillel staff, makes this process so much easier and less stressful. I am hoping for the best outcome for the fall, but whatever happens, I know we will get through this together. @ Julia Levy is president of Michigan State University’s Jewish Student Union.

MAY 28 • 2020

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Mazel Tov! Emily C. Levin Graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition. We are very proud of you and your accomplishments!

With Much Love, Mom, Dad and Daniel

Congratulations! Hunter Oliver Vainik

We are so proud of you and all you have accomplished. You have been such a joy in our lives! May all your dreams and wishes come true. We love you! Mom, Dad, Trevor, Grace, Bubbie, Grandpa, Moose and Ginger

Congratulations! Josh Dudovitz We are so proud of you! Good luck at University of Minnesota! Love, Mom, Dad, Lindsay, Fenway & Briggs

LIKE US ON FACEBOOK @d etroi tjewi s hnew s

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Online Fellowship

Wayne State University student fellows meet in the Before Times to hold civil discourse.

Detroit Center for Civil Discourse successfully moves online. Jeremy Rosenberg } jewish@edu writer

ow do you move a class online when the entire premise revolves around sitting at the same table in the same place? Well, if you’re one of the leaders of the Detroit Center for Civil Discourse fellowship, you may just do it with ease. That’s right, ease. After nearly eight months of in-person meetings, the fellowship was forced to move online. The fellowship, comprised of Wayne State students and based at WSU, is one of many ways that DCCD executes its mission, which encourages deep civic relationships between diverse people through respectful dialogue. It was initially designed for 20 fellows from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds to sit around the same conference room table, face-to-face, with an opportunity to engage with one another. “The shift to online meetings came at a time after the cohort already built a foundation of trust and camaraderie,” said Ariana Mentzel, managing director of DCCD. Each session would feature a topic, usually with a speaker and guided discussion. Over the year, the cohort had difficult conversations about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, participated in anti-bias training with AntiDefamation League staff and

learned about Judaism and Islam in cultural and religious ways. During the first Zoom meeting, the conversation focused on the novel coronavirus; no one was disappointed. “It is obviously less than ideal for us meet online rather than in-person, but we’ve turned the difficult situation into an opportunity to support one another,” said Nisim Nesimov, a WSU senior and DCCD fellow. The move online also gave Mentzel, WSU Professor Saeed Khan and Rabbi David Polsky an opportunity to change the cohort’s participation outside of Zoom sessions. Over the course of the year, there were numerous “bonus opportunities,” which included speakers and events. Rather than scrapping the idea of these bonus opportunities, new “online bonus opportunities” were offered, including TED Talks, podcasts, conversations and interviews. These hands-on activities gave each fellow an opportunity to learn about something new. Following the last few meetings of the year, the plan is for the fellows to continue working on group projects. The hope is that they’ll be able to reunite again and have a year-end social gathering. @ Jeremy Rosenberg is a senior at Wayne State and was a 2020 DCCD fellow.

THE DETROIT CENTER FOR CIVIL DISCOURSE

for college students by college students

THE DETROIT CENTER FOR CIVIL DISCOURSE

WARRIOR STRONG TO THE FINISH Congratulations, Wayne State University Class of 2020. You did it. You graduated from a nationally ranked research university, strengthened by the culture, industry and diversity of its urban environment. And now, you join the ranks of an alumni powerhouse of nearly 275,000. You started strong, and you ﬁnished Warrior Strong. We couldn’t be more proud.

wayne.edu

COURTESY OF U-M HILLEL

for college students by college students

Sarah Wish & Marissa Levey started an Instagram account to support college students.

Online Support Two Jewish U-M students start Instagram account dedicated to supporting students during the COVID-19 crisis. Sarah Wish & Marissa Levey } jewish@edu writers

s University of Michigan students, we have experienced many stressors driven by the pandemic, including the adjustment to online school, cancel-

lation of milestones and loss of various experiences. I, Sarah Wish, a rising University of Michigan senior from New Jersey, was abruptly sent home from my study

abroad program in Denmark. I, Marissa Levey, a recent University of Michigan graduate, lost my last two months of senior year, including my graduation. Through our own research and conversations with students, we realized that students everywhere were struggling. With no centralized resource to specifically support students, students did not have a way to navigate the constant influx of news and spread of misinformation during this time. We decided to create an Instagram account, sponsored by the Mount Sinai Health System, dedicated to supporting students during the pandemic. The Instagram, @covid19studentsupport, is a platform

committed to supporting students, by students, during the pandemic. Even though we are U-M students from New Jersey, our content is geared to support all students of all backgrounds from all campuses during these hard times. We aim to share scientific evidence-based COVID-19 information, to support student mental and physical well-being, and to address common student questions and concerns about the virus. We hope this account gives students a way to navigate this trying and unprecedented time, by acknowledging the challenges our peers are facing and promoting ways to cope with these difficulties. We aim to specifically address the unique stressors

Reading Between the Lines Inter-collegiate book club tackles Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Noa Dahan, Isabella Lieberman and Sarah Weiss } jewish@edu writers

turn to you, neighbor, in the hope that an honest telling of my story may touch you — and help create some understanding, if not agreement, between us.” So writes Yossi Klein Halevi in the opening chapter of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, the book which our Israel-themed book club, “Reading Between the Lines,” is currently reading. Meeting virtually every Friday afternoon, the book club includes students from Michigan State University, Eastern Michigan University, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo College and Grand

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Valley State University. Launched in April and organized by Maddi Jackson (director of Israel Education and Programming for MSU and the Hillel Campus Alliance of Michigan), Reading Between the Lines provides an opportunity for students from all these colleges to connect through reading. In the midst of quarantine, we gather on Zoom for lively discussion of the latest chapter of Letters, engaging and exchanging thoughts, feelings, questions, concerns and ideas. With topics of conversation ranging from politics to the-

ology, from ancient history to personal identity — and the intersection of all these issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — our weekly book club hour is both fun and intellectually stimulating. Halevi has the profound talent of simultaneously voicing his perspective and resonating deeply with his reader. His

writing takes a complicated conflict, one that is rooted in a long and nuanced history, and translates it into something both understandable and intimate. The book club provides a refreshing chance for participants to think about the world beyond our usual social bubbles. Seven time zones

KALAMAZOO HILLEL

this demographic faces with content geared toward all students and young adults. Our account provides mental and physical health support, with posts about telemedicine services, destigmatizing mental illness, and free resources for improved sleep and physical activity, just to name a few. We also share unique ways to connect with loved ones who are physically distanced, such as virtual games to play and virtual date ideas. Additionally, we promote ways to shape our individual perspectives on the circumstances impacting our age demographic, including the cancellation of summer internships or the uncertainty about school in the fall. We also post funny and relatable tweets and

memes each week because we all need comedic relief during these times. We are so grateful for the success of our account thus far. With more than 1,100 followers, our content has generated support from numerous colleges, health professionals and Hillels across the country. If you’re a student or young adult interested in learning how to support your mental and physical wellbeing in quarantine, give us a follow @covid19studentsupport on Instagram! Everyone is struggling in their own ways, but know you are not alone in facing these challenges. @

away from Israel, members “Zooming in” from their own devices, we come together to socialize, explore and develop a critical understanding and perspective on Jewish history, contemporary issues and the world around us. Halevi’s writing is thoughtful, personal and often emotional — qualities reflected in our book club’s dialogue. We begin each meeting by talking about a chapter of Letters, but inevitably end up drifting away from the text itself, sharing our own feelings and views as well as the ways in which we, as JewishAmerican college students, feel the ripples of Israel’s political turmoil in our own lives. Our discussion helps us interact with the text on a meaningful personal level, while the book itself provides

a thought-provoking account that powerfully captures and contextualizes the political and emotional difficulty and complexity of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. Soon, Reading Between the Lines will have the incredible opportunity of speaking with Halevi via video call. We look forward to digging even deeper into his work, ideas and connection to Israel. While we are not the “neighbors” to whom Halevi addresses his letters, we are fortunate to be among the many readers touched by Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. @

Sarah Wish is a rising senior at the University of Michigan. Marissa Levey is a recent University of Michigan graduate.

Noa Dahan is a student at Western Michigan University. Isabella Lieberman is a student at Grand Valley State University. Sarah Weiss is a student at Eastern Michigan University.

Remembering Survivors

Students plan Virtual Yom HaShoah Community Reflection. Naomi Verne } jewish@edu writer

n May 1, the community of Kalamazoo College staff, students, administrators and supporters joined a Zoom call for the annual Yom HaShoah Community Reflection. This event is usually put on every year in person; people fill up the chapel in the center of campus, and we remember the lost and the survivors. When approached with the question of “Should we do a Yom HaShoah reflection this year?” My answer was a resounding yes! It was made possible by the wonderful members of Hillel at Kalamazoo College and Chaplain Elizabeth Candido. Living in the middle of a pandemic can be stressful, but I believe it is also an opportunity to step back and grow. For me, this time has been spent reflecting on my own connections to Judaism and examining what Yom HaShoah means to me. I came to that conclusion the day before our Zoom call, when listening to my fellow classmates practice the Mourner’s Kaddish, tell the story of Paula MarksBolton, sing Eli Eli to remember resistance fighter Hannah Szenes and remember their own thoughts while walking through a death camp. This year, Yom HaShoah must be about learning from our past, cultivating community and honoring the lives of those in the Holocaust more than any past

TOP: A pre-pandemic get-together of Kalamazoo College’s Hillel at an Avi Shabbat they had in February.

years. I believe the success of the Yom HaShoah Community Reflection came from remembering our past so as not to repeat it in the future. Anne Frank and thousands of others died from typhus and disease that spread through crowded camps without access to medical treatment. Today, we have camps with thousands of refugees who have been placed as “the other,” just as Jews have been, and prisons where COVID-19 runs rampant. Our Chinese classmates face xenophobia just as our ancestors (and even us) faced anti-Semitism. Through acknowledging these comparisons, we can grow as a society and honor those on Yom HaShoah. This community reflection served to bring our small campus together; not just through the act of joining the Zoom call, but also through creating a common time to mourn as we know how other marginalized communities have felt. We are connected through shared grief and memories, and honoring Yom HaShoah is an act of resistance and comfort in the face of the unknown. We are stronger because of this, and we have learned how to stand up for justice during trying times. Naomi Verne is a sophomore at Kalamazoo College.

MAY 28 • 2020

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Arts&Life music

What’s in ‘A Written Testimony’? A Jewish conversation about rapper Jay Electronica’s controversial debut album. ANDREW LAPIN EDITOR | REISA SHANAMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

his March, rapper Jay Electronica released his debut studio album, A Written Testimony. The album, which features Jay-Z on eight of the 10 tracks, received wide praise in the music world. But it’s also been criticized for lyrics and content that hint at possible anti-Semitism. JN Editor Andrew Lapin discussed these issues with Detroit-based music writer Reisa Shanaman, a graduate of Frankel Jewish Academy and Michigan State University who writes about modern music for VICE, XLR8R and other outlets.

Andrew: Let’s begin with the basics. Who is Jay Electronica, and what is the buzz and controversy surrounding A Written Testimony? Reisa: Jay Electronica is a hip-hop artist originally from New Orleans, where he grew up in the Magnolia Projects. He signed on to Jay-Z’s label, Roc Nation, in 2010. There’s also a local connection: Detroit rapper Denaun Porter is a longtime collaborator of Electronica’s. The raps on A Written Testimony are clever, the rhyme schemes complex and the beats

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compelling. Electronica refers to his autobiography as “Quranic;” Islamic themes and Arabic phrases run throughout. Electronica is also a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI), and the album includes samples of speeches delivered by the movement’s notorious anti-Semitic leader Louis Farrakhan. That and some alarming lyrics carry connotations of anti-Semitism. Andrew: Let’s talk about those lyrics. On the song “Ghost of Souja Slim,” Electronica raps, “And I bet you a Rothschild I get a bang for my dollar / The Synagogue of Satan want me to hang by my collar.” Why might he be referencing the Rothschilds, a family that has historically been the target of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and what is the phrase “Synagogue of Satan?”

DPHILLIPSRN VIA CREATIVE COMMONS)

LEFT: Jay Electronica. FACING: A Written Testimony album cover.

Reisa: Let’s start with the first line, which, like most good rap lyrics, I sense has multiple layers. I don’t doubt the Rothschild name is alluding to the conspiracies marking the family as a symbol of absolute affluence and power, given the context within the song and themes of wealth throughout the album. However, it helps to know that Electronica had an extramarital affair with the heiress Kate Rothschild, his former manager, and is rumored to be responsible for the breakup of her marriage. There’s definitely a double entendre here, and a cheeky one at that. “Synagogue of Satan” is the lyric that really sent some reeling, and understandably so. The phrase originates in the New Testament. Revelation 2:9 reads, “I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan.” Farrakhan has frequently used the phrase “synagogue of Satan.” His intentions are more obvious, considering his well-documented anti-Semitism. In Electronica’s usage, it’s worth keeping in mind the phrase’s Biblical roots and broader definition: those who try to destroy a community and its values from the inside. Like Jay-Z says in the song, “No civilization has conquered from the outside until they destroy themselves from within.” Andrew: When Electronica uses the line, it’s difficult to tell who he’s addressing. It’s common in rap to employ lines with slippery meanings, and Electronica is surely aware of these connotations. Could he be deliberately courting anti-Semitism? And then there’s Farrakhan, whom Electronica clearly admires. He samples the minister on this song and in album opener “The Overwhelming Event.” Farrakhan says, “The Black people of America are the real Children of Israel.” What do you make of that? Farrakhan and the NOI have a close lineage with hip-hop, right? Reisa: I doubt he’s trying to prompt accusations of anti-Semitism, as another line in the same song is, “The thing he need like a hole in his head is publicity.” However, it’s hard to know his true intentions. Hip-hop’s ties to Farrakhan, NOI and the group’s offshoot The Five Percent Nation go back to some of the genre’s originators, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa. The links include everyone from the Wu-Tang Clan

Rolling Hills ROC NATI ON

and Snoop Dogg to Jay-Z. Following the murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. in 1996 and 1997, Farrakhan facilitated truces between other hip-hop p artists. In 2001, Farrakhan gave the keynote address at the Hip-Hop Summit in New York. In addition, Fruit of Islam, NOI’s paramilitary arm, have been known to guard black residents of dangerous, crime-laden neighborhoods. One resident of D.C.’s “Wicked District” of the ’60s told The Atlantic in 2018, “I will never forget how they calmed the fears of so many mothers and children, just by their mere presence.” For many in the black community, NOI was a protective presence, reducing crime and keeping families safe. It’s an entirely different frame of reference from ours. The speech Electronica samples nods to themes of black empowerment. It’s a common theme on the album and in hiphop in general. Andrew: I don’t think Electronica’s album, and his monumental talent, can be written off because of his ties to the NOI. But I’m troubled by the provocations. I don’t know how you celebrate someone like Farrakhan without hinting that you, too, might share his most reprehensible views. When Peter Rosenberg, a Jewish DJ who co-hosts the hip-hop radio show Ebro in the Morning, criticized Electronica for the lyrics, the artist lashed out. “We are willing to hold a discussion in a PUBLIC FORUM on The Synagogue of Satan and its meaning with any Scholars of Theology you would like to bring,” Electronica

tweeted at Rosenberg, adding a profane acronym before later deleting the message. That seems like anger from either being misinterpreted … or called out. (Still, I’d personally welcome a public discussion on the topic in the right setting.) What are your final thoughts on A Written Testimony? How should Jews respond to it? Reisa: I find Electronica’s overall message to be pro-black, and he often employs proIslamic sentiments to that end; there’s nothing innately anti-Semitic about either. But the red flags being raised are valid, and hateful sentiments should absolutely be condemned. It’s important to recognize just how disparate many of our experiences as American Jews are to Electronica’s and the majority of the black American community he is addressing. I think this is an opportunity to better understand each other’s cultural sensitivities. Electronica’s an immensely talented artist, and I do hope he can find a way to engage in a thoughtful dialogue on this. For now, as a someone whose ancestors were no strangers to oppression, and whose people are the subject of stereotypes, scapegoating and prejudice to this day, I find there is much more on the album to relate to than there is to take issue with.

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Yad Ezra’s 30th Fundraising Event

Wednesday September 30, 2020 virtual/in person TBD

Event Co-chairs

Gillian & Michael Bassirpour Rissa & Sheldon Winkelman Esther & Neal Zalenko

Lucinda & Sandy Rosen 2020 Honorees

President

Alan Reiter

Call (248) 548-3663 or check us out online www.yadezra.org MAY 28 • 2020

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Arts&Life books

UMASS.EDU

MERYL SCHENKER PHOTOGRAPHY

ow Yiddish Changed was never part of my family life. America and How America When I got to college, I took Changed Yiddish, puba course on Yiddish literature lished in January by Restless and discovered all these interestBooks, collects 150 ing Yiddish writers. years of writing Eventually I went on Yiddish culture to graduate school in America. The to become a literary anthology’s co-editors scholar, and I had a are Josh Lambert, mentor who said that academic director if I wanted to underof the Yiddish Book stand the history of Center in Amherst, Jewish writers, and Massachusetts, and of Jewish literature Ilan Stavans incoming director in America, I’d need of the Jewish Studies to have access to the program at Wellesley Yiddish texts. So she College (and a Ph.D. pushed me: “You have alum of the University to go start studying of Michigan), and Ilan Yiddish!” And I did. Stavans, an endowed I went to a summer professor at Amherst program and started College. to learn the language. Josh Lambert It was amazing to JN: Where and how discover how much did your own personal of my own story, my love affair with Yiddish begin? own family history, was conStavans: I am a Mexican Jew, tained in Yiddish culture. born in Mexico City, [and] went Years after my grandfather to Yiddish school from kinderdied, I went down to my parents’ garten to high school. We learned basement and found a Yiddish of Jewish culture, and Yiddish book owned by him. And I could literature, and also of Mexican understand what he had been culture and of Mexican literature, reading. all in Yiddish. Spanish was the language of the street, the public JN: This is a fascinating book language; Yiddish was the private because it’s an anthology of so language, the language of grandmany different genres, writers parents, parents and schooling. and backgrounds. What was the I have a very close, kind of process like of putting the book romantic relationship with together? Was it totally chaotic? Yiddish. I see it as the entry way Lambert: It was the best kind of to a culture. But I’m also very chaos. We knew we didn’t have critical of that culture, both in an enormous amount of time, constructive and maybe more because part of the intention of forceful ways. this project was to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Yiddish Lambert: I grew up in Toronto; Book Center. So we used as our I went to Jewish school, but starting point a really wonderful Yiddish wasn’t ever a part of it. magazine that the center has And even though my grandfather published. Pakn Treger tried to do had immigrated from Poland and over all those decades what this was a native Yiddish speaker, it book tried to do: Find compelling

Two Literature Professors Share ‘How Yiddish Changed America’ Josh Lambert and Ilan Stavans discuss their own love of Yiddish and the challenge of putting the book together. ANDREW FIELD CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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“For 40 years, Gallery Restaurant has served up masterpieces” ~ Danny Raskin

THE GALLERY RESTAURANT material from Yiddish culture and bring it to the attention of an English-language audience. We got down from the shelves 40 years of the magazine. And we started to highlight pieces we thought were the most exciting, most interesting. We built up this enormous list, which would have made a book three or four times as long as the one we ended up with. Then we started to shape things into sections. Stavans: I love how Josh put it — the best type of chaos. We started with an abstract vision, of trying to put in-between covers some of the most representative elements that would, together, give a vision of what Yiddish culture has been in America—as an immigrant language, and as a language and culture of assimilation. It’s ambitious, because [over] 150 years, particularly with such a creative, diverse, thought-provoking culture, there is so much to consider. You know, we Jews have produced so many terrific anthologies. The Talmud is an anthology; the Torah is an anthology. We love printing voices from different orders and periods. And in some ways, that’s what we were trying to do here, too, to create a dialogue among people that didn’t live together, or even knew each other. But in this book, they happen to be inhabiting the same building and talking to one another. JN: How do each of you understand the cultural legacy of Yiddish, not only today but also for the future? Lambert: For me, what’s most compelling is how Yiddish was at the right time and place

at these crucial moments in the history of America and so much of world civilization. There’s a quotation in the book which I love, where Alan Alda, who is not Jewish, says that his father, who was an actor, learned Yiddish in the Catskills, and called it “the unofficial language of show business.” It’s amazing to think about that—a non-Jewish actor learned Yiddish as a way of connecting to the history of show business! Yiddish is an invitation to think in more complex ways about the past and the experiences of Jewish people. What I always hope is that Yiddish allows Jewish people in the contemporary moment to think in more expansive ways about what the possibilities of Jewishness are. Stavans: Because I am a Latino immigrant to the U.S., I see Yiddish as a very successful immigration language. There are other languages that have disappeared very fast and have left very little trace in English. Yiddish has been very successful because it refuses to die. And Yiddish has also gone from being a language to becoming a way of dreaming and of thinking, of engaging the world. And that is very clearly manifested in the various generations of American Jews, from the immigrants to their successors. In that sense, Yiddish is a portal, an entrance. I love the emotion that Yiddish can convey, the way it delivers sort of aggressive sentences with a kind of humor. And I love the endurance of Yiddish, the fact that it resists and goes on by not wanting to disappear altogether.

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Arts&Life film

Rewind: Jewish Filmmaker Confronts His Traumatic Childhood A new documentary uses home-video footage to help its director come to terms with his abuse, including at the hands of a prominent cantor. ANDREW LAPIN EDITOR

s a child, Sasha Joseph Neulinger was gifted but deeply troubled. He was a successful actor but nursed many suicidal thoughts and often swerved into erratic behavior. And he was captured on film at every stage by his father Henry, a compulsive videographer and producer of PBS documentaries. It wasn’t until Sasha was a teenager that he finally had the courage to explain what had happened to him: For years, he and his sister Bekah were molested by two of their uncles and their older cousin. Neulinger chronicles his own journey out of abuse in his new documentary, Rewind, now available for VOD rental. It is a harrowing film, but a powerful one, as we watch this young man heal himself and his family through the power of his own art and investigation. Growing up in a Jewish home in Philadelphia, Sasha was frequently visited by his father’s brothers. The oldest brother, Howard Nevison, was a prominent cantor for many years at Temple Emanu-el in New York City, the largest Reform congregation in the country. When Sasha’s parents weren’t around, he says in the film, Howard would take him upstairs and molest him, threatening to kill him if he ever told anyone. (Of the three men who violated Sasha, he says Howard was the worst.) But when Sasha finally did tell his parents, his father revealed that he, too, had been molested by both his brothers as a child. The abuse haunted the family, and its reveal

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destroyed Sasha’s parents’ marriage: His mother Jacqui was furious her husband had allowed known abusers to have access to their children and divorced him soon after. Their life before everything came to light was documented through the copious home-video footage captured by Sasha’s father, which Sasha himself revisits for his documentary. Scenes of the extended family clowning around at gatherings are contrasted with the knowledge of what was happening in private: The brothers put on little sketch shows for each other to hide the demons they unleash when the cameras are off. The use of home video footage to comment on child sex abuse in a Jewish family recalls the 2003 documentary Capturing the Friedmans, except that in this case, the perpetrators’ guilt is never called into question. Sasha’s story takes its greatest toll when the family tries to bring Howard Nevison to justice. After Nevison is initially accused of abuse in 2002, the case makes national headlines as the “cantor sex abuse” story. Temple Emanu-el quickly rallies around him, with several congregants starting a legal defense fund for him. Nevison’s lawyers successfully drag on the case for years, finally reaching a plea deal in 2006 just before it’s scheduled to go to trial: taking 12 years’ probation on misdemeanor charges in order to avoid prison time. The sentencing hearing arrives just around the High Holidays, and Nevison retires from Emanu-el that year, maintaining his innocence to the Jewish press. Today he lives as a free man in New York.

Besides a story of one man’s self-actualization, Rewind is also about the necessity of finding one’s own spiritual catharsis. The biggest representative of institutional Judaism in Sasha’s life was also a monster; yet once Sasha finds the courage to go public, he is still able to enjoy his own bar mitzvah celebration. (We see video footage of him dancing at his party, having found a way to move forward.) This is not the first time a story of abuse has intersected with that of Jewish religious leaders, but it is nevertheless nauseating to ponder the dark reality of what humans in any position of power are capable of. And the film is also very clear about its belief that the true meaning of Judaism lies not in what religious hierarchy instructs or condones, but in what it means to the individual. Sasha has a close bond with his great-grandfather Joseph, who led the family out of Europe. When it comes time for him to testify against his uncle, Sasha takes the advice of his child psychiatrist and wears Joseph’s kippah on the witness stand, using that piece of his great-grandfather for protection and bravery. His stunning, clear testimony helps shift the tide of public opinion and keep the case alive. But more importantly, it frees Sasha. Later, after his ordeal is over, Sasha takes his great-grandfather’s last name, Neulinger, as a way of starting his new life. It’s a ray of hope at the end of a grueling ordeal: a sign that even after a childhood of unrelenting misery, going forward and finding meaning in life can still be possible.

TNT

Arts&Life celebrity jews NATE BLOOM COLUMNIST

NEW STREAMING/ CABLE OFFERINGS Snowpiercer is an American post-apocalyptic dystopian thriller drama series that premiered on TNT cable on May 17. The 10-episode first season follows the passengers of the Snowpiercer, a gigantic, perpetually moving train that circles the globe carrying the remnants of humanity seven years after the world becomes a frozen wasteland. Themes include class warfare, social injustice and the politics of survival. The series stars Daveed Diggs, 38, and Jennifer Connelly, 49. Diggs, who won a supporting actor Tony for Hamilton, is the son of an African American father and a (white) Jewish mother. He was raised Jewish. Connelly, who won a supporting Oscar for A Beautiful

Mind, is the always secular daughter of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father. You can also catch Diggs in Central Park, a 13-episode animated musical sitcom. It started on Apple TV on May 20. It tells the story of a family of caretakers who live and work in Central Park. Diggs and Josh Gad, 39 (Frozen movies) have major voice roles. Space Force is a 10-episode comedy series that will premiere on Netflix May 29. It was created by Steve Carell, and he co-stars as the general in charge of Space Force, a new branch of the armed forces. Co-stars include Ben Schwartz, 38, as the secretary of the Air Force, and Diana Silvers, 22, as Carell’s daughter. Also co-starring is John Malkovich as a scientist who is a clear parody of the wacko character Dr. Strangelove in the Stanley Kubrick 1963 movie of the same

name (the late Peter Sellers, whose mother was Jewish, was brilliant as Strangelove). Noah Emmerich, 55, and Lisa Kudrow, 56, have recurring roles. ZACH BRAFF IS A MENSCH As many of you know, Broadway star Nick Cordero has waged an epic battle with COVID-19. Late last year, Codero and his wife, Amanda Klotts, decided to settle in Los Angeles. For seven months, they stayed at the guest house of his great friend Zach Braff (Scrubs, Garden State) while they were house hunting. They went back to New York in early April just to pack up their things. That’s when he contracted COVID-19. He’s been in Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Los Angeles, since early April. Cordero had to have his leg amputated, suffered

major lung damage and had a pacemaker installed. The good news is that he awoke from his coma on May 16, but he still isn’t out of the woods. Klotts and Elvis, the Coderos 1-year old son, have stayed on at the guest house. Klotts’ sister and brother have joined her in the guest house. Braff told the Hollywood Reporter: “We [Braff and his girlfriend] help them in any way we can, too. We obviously stay socially distanced from them, but we bring them food and wine and flowers.” Braff is also part of a community of friends raising money to defray Cordero’s medical expenses.

On The Go virtual events | learnings

STAYING CONNECTED At this time of social distancing, the Jewish News will try to bring awareness to events/learning situations offered online by synagogues, temples and community organizations. ISRAELI WINE CULTURE THROUGH JULY 5 Join wine experts, winemakers and celebrity chefs in a 24-part series celebrating all things Israeli wine. Register and get information on episodes at kosherwine.com. LIVE WEBCAST CONCERT 8 PM, MAY 30 The Chamber Music Society will present Laredo and Robinson. Visit chambermusicdetroit.org. TOUR ISRAEL NOON-1 PM, JUNE 2 Temple Shir Shalom is offering a live, virtual tour of Israel with Rabbi Daniel Schwartz and Israeli

tour guide Beni Levin. Learn about modern Israeli agriculture, meet a tomato farmer and learn how to cut tomatoes to get the most flavor from them on this one-hour guided tour on Zoom. To learn more or register, call 248-737-8700 or email audrey@shirshalom.org. FAMILY CONCERT 8 PM, JUNE 3 The Ark in Ann Arbor presents a series of family concerts streaming on the Ark Facebook page; a Facebook account is not necessary to view them. This night, see Willy Porter, acoustic guitarist. BEING RESILIENT 7 PM, JUNE 3 The Daniel B. Sobel Friendship Circle and UMatter will present “Building Blocks of Resilience with Andi Nitzkin” on Zoom. Nitzkin is a licensed therapist committed to working with individuals and families. Her clinical interests

lie in partnering with her clients to help them overcome anxiety, depression, painful experiences, family and relationship conflicts, and to navigate life transitions. She practices at Bright Spot Counseling, located in West Bloomfield. Registration info: amanda@ friendship circle.org. HISTORICAL INSIGHT 7 PM, JUNE 4 The Jewish Historical Society of Michigan will host Rebecca Starr speaking on “Growing Up Jewish in Northern Michigan.” Cost: $10 members; $18 non-members. A Zoom link will be sent to all registrants the day before. To register, contact kschuchman@ michjewishhistory.org.

Compiled by Sy Manello/Editorial Assistant Send items at least 14 days in advance to calendar@thejewishnews.com.

ISRAEL EDUCATOR WORKSHOP JUNE 28-JULY 1 The Center for Israel Education and the Emory University Institute for the Study of Modern Israel are presenting their 19th annual workshop on teaching about modern Israel. The four-day workshop is going virtual, enabling a larger group to participate and lowering the cost. The presentations and discussions will cover Israel’s politics and leadership, music among other aspects of Israeli culture, including social programming, networking opportunities and personalization options. In addition to educators, the workshop will welcome representatives of Jewish organizations with an interest in deepening their understanding of Israel’s many facets. The cost is $150 per person — discounted to only $75 for those who apply by June 1. Workshop attendees do not need to know Hebrew or be Jewish. Visit israeled.org/workshop to learn more and apply. Contact Heather Waters at heatherwaters@israeled.org with any questions. MAY 28 • 2020

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Business

Jared Rothberger has been sanitizing emergency response vehicles during the pandemic.

Business Not as Usual Small business owners adapt to doing business during a pandemic. JACKIE HEADAPOHL ASSOCIATE EDITOR

ccording to a survey from the Small Business Administration of Michigan, one in seven Michigan small businesses, or 14 percent, are not confident they will survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Those trying to weather the storm have had to adjust their business models and do their best to adapt to a new reality. Here are how some Metro

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Detroit Jewish business owners are changing to succeed despite the pandemic. MORTGAGE SECTOR Bob Rubin is in the mortgage business at HomeLend USA, based in Troy. “During the pandemic, I’ve been able to do all of my business from home,” he said. “I’ve also decided to use this time to give back.” With new technology,

Rubin can help customers get their required paperwork and signatures, so they never have to Bob Rubin leave their homes or let an appraiser or closing agent inside — perfect for maintaining social distancing. Rubin decided to turn his attention to religious organizations, churches and synagogues. “With rates so low, this is an ideal time for them to refinance mortgages and save several hundred dollars every month,” he said. “With most synagogues closed, they could really use the extra money now.” Rubin added that he wanted to do something nice for someone else, as well. “For new customers, I make a $1,000 donation to their favorite charity or religious organization,” he said. One customer recently chose Congregation Beth Shalom, which received a check from Rubin. “Sometimes I don’t make any money on the loan at all, but I feel like I’m making a difference,” he said. STAFFING Kristi Siegel, founder and president of Statewide Staffing in Farmington Hills, said the pandemic has severely impacted her business due to the inability to Kristi Siegel make wide-scale hiring decisions following the shelter-at-home executive order and social distancing guidelines. “A company like ours bases

its work off of interviewing candidates and meeting with new clients,” she said in an email. “We also interact with our clients while they utilize our office for confidential hiring searches. Through the shelter-in-place order, this currently isn’t being done. Fortunately for us and those we represent on both ends of the hiring process, much of this process can still be done virtually.” Virtual face-to-face meetings have become Statewide Staffing’s main source of communication and have allowed them to get candidates in the door for positions without the need for in-person interviews. As of May 15, it was back to work as usual for Statewide Staffing. “We plan to quickly identify and place top talent in other industries as the market begins to adjust,” Siegel said. “We anticipate it will take at least a few months, if not more, for things to normalize.” RETAIL Before Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-athome order closed the doors at Event Bliss in Franklin, the company had a “decent” social media presence, according to owner Terri Trepek. “After, we had to go full force — posting photos and asking clients to message us or call us if they wanted to buy something. Then we would run to the store, get the item and drop it off,” she said. “Now customers can pick up items curbside.” Early during the stay-athome order, before face masks were necessary for people going in public places, Event Bliss decided to offer unique face masks for customers,

COURTESY OF EVENT BLISS

Getting Back to Business Whitmer continues to allow different sectors of the economy to re-engage. Her stay-at-home order was set to expire May 28, and on May 26 she opened up retail and auto dealers by appointment only. To make transitioning easier, the Small Business Association of Michigan has developed resources to assist small businesses. “Getting back to work will require changes for small businesses that could be overwhelming,” said SBAM President Brian Calley in a statement.

The “Get Back to Work Safely Guide” includes tips and resources for issues that small businesses may face, including revising employee policies and employee handbooks, as well as talking with employees about new expectations. The guide also provides checklists on PPE use, cleaning and health screenings, as well as other considerations small businesses may need to take on in their facilities. The guide is available at sbam.org/Resources/COVID19-Resources.

COURTESY OF JAN-PRO

including one for new grads. “We thought, ‘What do we have to lose?’” Trepek said. “We’re not making any profit off the masks — the profits go to charity —but people want them, and it keeps us in front of our customers’ minds.” Trepek is optimistic about the future. “We are definitely going to make it. People want to shop; that’s the good thing,” she said. “But how we shop is going to be very different. We will do more by-appointment sessions with our customers and keep working through our social media.” JANITORIAL Deemed essential workers by Whitmer, Jan-Pro in Southfield never had to close; however, a third of its customers did, according to owner Jared Rothberger. That left the company scrambling to increase revenue so it wouldn’t

have to reduce staff. Late last year, the company started a supply business, offering their customers and the public masks, gloves, toilet paper, paper towel and hand sanitizer, among other items. That business has taken off. “We did about $4,000 worth of business in November, compared to several hundred thousand in April,” Rothberger said. “That’s helped us make payroll.” As the economy in Michigan slowly begins to re-engage, Jan-Pro is sharing how use of its disinfectant spray EnviroShield can help slow the spread of COVID19, keeping employees and customers safe. EnviroShield eliminates 99.9% of bacteria and viruses on exposed surfaces in a building. It wraps around surfaces to hit hard-toreach areas, and has been used in hundreds of local facilities

over the last several years, including childcare facilities, medical facilities and schools. Throughout the pandemic, JAN-PRO has given free EnviroShield sprays for all police, fire and EMS vehicles, precincts and fire stations. As part of the process, Rothberger was able to get behind the wheel of those first-responder vehicles for short drives. “I lived out my dream to drive a fire truck, police car and ambulance,” he said. “My 10-year-old self was so proud.” REAL ESTATE Dan Gutfreund of Signature Sotheby’s in Birmingham has been selling real estate for a long time. Before COVID-19 hit, he Dan was selling two Gutfreund or three homes

a week. During the stay-athome order, he sold four homes total. Technology helped. Using MatterPort 3D technology, agents were able to give clients virtual homes tours. Whitmer allowed the real estate sector to relaunch with limits on May 7. Gutfreund said that was welcome news, although he and his team are having to adapt the way they sell homes to help slow the spread of the virus. Now that people are once again able to walk through homes, changes had to be made. “We’ve put sanitization stations in every one of the homes we’re showing,” he said. The stations contain masks, booties and sanitizers. Showings are limited to four people and “perspective buyers are asked to touch nothing and maintain CDC social distancing standards,” he said. Open houses are still not allowed, so technology will continue to play a big role, Gutfreund said. “We’re doing virtual open houses on Facebook video, using Zoom and providing 3D tours online.” He said his employees are going to continue working from home, and title companies and banks are allowing closings to take place online. “Health and safety remain top of mind,” he said. He says the industry has a positive outlook for the future. “There is pent-up demand and interest rates and inventory are at all-time low. This truly is a sellers’ market. I think the market will snap back as soon as the governor relaxes the rules.”

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Health

Helping the Helpers Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute offers free short-term counseling. SHARI S. COHEN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

lan Krohn, Ph.D., 74, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst based in Ann Arbor, is training psychiatric residents to help medical professionals who are treating COVID-19 patients deal with the emotional fallout from the pandemic. Dr. Krohn, an adjunct/ clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan and a faculty member of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and Alan Krohn Society, has served as a Red Cross disaster medical health worker in

Help Lines from the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and Society • Residents of Ann Arbor and western Wayne County: (734) 677-1590. • Residents of the tri-county Detroit area (outside western Wayne County): (248) 907-4407. The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, founded in 1963 and based in Farmington Hills, is a group of mental health clinicians licensed in counseling, psychiatry, psychology, and social work. The Institute offers training in psychotherapy as well as continuing medical education for therapists.

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New Orleans, Oklahoma, Sri Lanka and the Congo region. He has helped survivors of devastating hurricanes and tornados as well as wars. But the work he’s doing now is different. He describes the COVID-19 pandemic as more of a complex trauma than a single traumatic event like a tornado. “The COVID-19 pandemic is unique because you can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere and there is no clear beginning and end to it,” Dr. Krohn explains. Feeling overwhelmed is a “normal reaction to an abnormal situation. People lose a sense of self. They may be a little bit frayed as their sense of identity gets lost. Some people need the trappings of life more than others. They are missing their sense of connection and customary roles,” he says. According to Marc Rosen, Ph.D., 65, a psychologist who lives in Bloomfield Village and is the public information chair of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, Marc Rosen calls to crisis lines have increased during the pandemic. “We are looking at other people with some suspicion. There is a feeling of looking over our shoulders,” he says. In addition, the pandemic can trigger traumas from earlier life. While the pandemic is disruptive and unnerving for everyone, it is particularly devastating for health care professionals. “They are dedicated, courageous peo-

ple who are in a life-and-death situation for themselves. Some are sleeping in their garages to isolate themselves from their families,” Dr. Krohn says. “They are undersupplied in terms of equipment and there is an egregious lack of coordination from the federal government.” They experience “flat-out fear and vulnerability” as well as guilt that they haven’t helped their patients. This can lead to feeling overwhelmed psychologically and walling off of emotions, he explains. In response to the pandemic and Mental Health Awareness Month, which occurs every May, the institute decided to offer free, confidential, short-term counseling for those experiencing pain and trauma during the pandemic. “We all felt a sense of helplessness and a need to help,” Dr. Rosen says. More than 20 licensed professional therapists are providing five phone or video counseling sessions at no charge. They will help callers talk through their emotions and normalize their reactions to the pandemic, guide them on self-care and assess their personal resources, Dr. Rosen says. Their primary goal is to help health care workers, first responders (police, firefighters and EMS workers), as well as those serving the public, such as grocery, postal and delivery workers. However, if other individuals call, they will be given resources for help as well. “No one will be turned away,” Dr. Rosen says.

Need a COVID-19 Test? Oakland County expands COVID-19 drive-thru testing. CORRIE COLF STAFF WRITER

akland County announced on May 20 that they have expanded free COVID-19 drive-thru testing to include any adult over the age of 18, especially those who are beginning to return to work. Previously, the county offered testing for residents above the age of 18, prioritizing those experiencing symptoms, first responders, essential or critical infrastructure employees, adults age 65 or older and those with underlying health conditions. “We all know how important it is for our economy that

our residents start working again and our companies and businesses re-engage,” Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter said in a statement. “But we also know we’re not in the clear yet. As more people return to work, we need to be vigilant and mindful that the coronavirus is still with us.” Residents who are interested in being tested are required to make an appointment through the Oakland County Health Division’s Nurse on Call hotline at 1-800-8485533. A doctor’s note or prescription is not needed for the

free test. Residents will receive their results within three days. Testing is available at three different locations throughout Oakland County. On Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., testing is offered in Southfield at the South Oakland Health Center at 27725 Greenfield Road. On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., residents can head over to the Oakland County Complex, 1200 N. Telegraph Road in Pontiac. The Novi Civic Center, 45175 W. 10 Mile Road, Novi, also offers testing on Fridays, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Only individuals with a scheduled appointment will be tested. Residents are asked to bring their photo ID with them to the testing site. The person being tested will remain in the vehicle the entire time, and the

test will be administered by inserting a swab into the nose or mouth of the individual. According to their statement, Oakland County Health Division has tested 4,844 individuals at its drive-thru sites, 249 of whom have tested positive for COVID-19, which is a test positivity rate of 5%. Oakland County continues to encourage first responders, essential business employees or anyone who displays symptoms of the coronavirus — fever, trouble breathing, persistent dry cough — to schedule an appointment. “I urge anyone with underlying health conditions and those adults who are returning to work to get tested,” Coulter said in a statement. “The great progress we’ve made has put many residents back on the job. We need to keep our guard up.”

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF MICHIGAN HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS

Health

Michigan Healthcare Professionals Sets Up COVID Testing Site Out of the more than 6,000 tests they’ve conducted, about 20 percent have been positive DANNY SCHWARTZ CONTRIBUTING WRITER

r. Barry Feldman and Michigan Healthcare Professionals (MHP), the group practice he co-founded, set up a COVID-19 testing clinic behind their office building in March and have since tested more than 6,000 people. Just like the rest of the world, Feldman and his practice were taken off guard by the COVID19 pandemic. Because Feldman’s primarily older, sick patients are especially at-risk, he had to make an important decision. “We decided around midMarch that we were going to close our doors to patients and go into a virtual lockdown, conducting all of our business via telemedicine,” Feldman said. Feldman then went a step further. He and his wife Lesley, who is also the practice’s manager, decided to set up a testing clinic behind their office building in Farmington Hills.

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Feldman immediately proceeded to recruit staff willing to help with the rigorous testing efforts. The clinic then rented an RV trailer, which holds the needed electronics for the testing process, and acquired a drive-through tent which protects the doctors from the elements. The doctors in the testing clinic consist of Ryan Victor, Jeffrey Provizer and Jeff Lipsky, and their presence for the testing also allows Feldman to complete his administrative duties throughout the day. All of the doctors and administrators in the clinic don full protective gear. As the testing clinic has evolved, the process has been cloned, with two more MHP testing sites in Rochester and Waterford. Additional medical staff Elizabeth Owen, Barb Hartman, Rhonda Davis, Eric Davis, Jackie Crawford, Sarah

Dworetsky and Kelly Griffin have been helping out with testing at those sites. A liaison, Amy Glasser, goes out to procure equipment if a certain testing site needs it, including anything from tape to tents to RVs. “These people are superstars,” Feldman said. “Rain, sleet, snow, they show up every single day.” A philanthropic donor from California (whom Feldman said wished to not be named) donated protective gear, including 800 gowns and 700 masks to the testing center, which Feldman describes as invaluable. Feldman and his practice started the clinic on March 20, testing about 60 patients a day. At this point, the clinic is now up to testing 120 people a day. About 20 percent of the clinic’s testing has come back positive for coronavirus. A whiteboard displayed at the clinic, consisting of all the data compiled so far, is updated every week. As of the week of May 18, the MHP COVID-19 testing clinic has seen over 6,400 drive-through visits, treated 22,000 telemedicine encounters and kept 1,830 people out of emergency rooms and hospitals. Feldman and his practice are also currently working on a research project that will be published in the near future. The project aims to alert people that there will be individuals returning to work soon that are totally asymptomatic yet have

the virus. In their limited study of testing six industries so far, roughly 10 percent of people in the study have COVID-19 but are asymptomatic. Many individuals tested by the clinic have inquired about COVID-19 antibody testing, but Feldman believes there’s still more questions than answers about that. “The problem with antibody testing is that we don’t quite know what to do with that yet,” Feldman explained. “We don’t know whether infection from coronavirus gives you long-term immunity. A negative immunoglobulin doesn’t mean you’re virus-free. It just means you haven’t formed immunoglobulins yet.” Feldman holds firm that it could take many months, if not years, to come to a point where the virus is understood completely and where weapons for both preventing it and treating it have been developed. More than anything, Feldman hopes for a cautious and prudent return to a new normal. “As anxious as I am to see our economy and everything else get going, I’ve looked this monster in the face, and I can tell you, we don’t want to go back there,” Feldman added. “We have to be extremely careful in how we start this locomotive because once it gets rolling, it’s hard to stop.”

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SERVING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY FOR OVER 30 YEARS! MAY 28 • 2020

| 91

An Evening with Mitch

Join us on Facebook Live for a conversation with Dr. Mitch Hollander sharing his personal prostate cancer journey.

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92 |

MAY 28 • 2020

Plasma Drive

A donor is prepared for a blood draw.

Blood drives held in hopes of helping COVID-19 patients. SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

esults from the first Hatzalah of Michigan blood drive, held in Oak Park on May 7, determined that 100 of those tested have the antibodies needed to donate plasma to COVID-19 patients, with each session supplying enough plasma to benefit three patients. A second drive on May 10 found 180 individuals with antibodies. According to a spokesperson at Ascension Providence, 100% of those who tested positive from both drives expressed willingness to donate plasma, compared to a very low percentage of those who were contacted after testing positive in other settings. Hatzalah of MichiganEmergency Medical Services, in partnership with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., held the early May drives. The purpose was to identify those whose blood shows antibody levels high enough to allow them to donate plasma for scientific trials and treatment of individuals who have the virus. Blood drawn was sent to the Mayo Clinic to be tested. Names of those whose tests show probable useful antibodies are being shared with Hatzalah, whose staff will work with Ascension Providence Hospital in Southfield to direct donors to blood banks and help with screening and registration. Ensuring social distancing, potential donors remained in their cars in front of Yeshiva

Beth Yehudah in Oak Park until called to private tents. Volunteer medics from the Oak Park-based Hatzalah, along with area doctors and nurses, drew blood. The second drive added a dedicated test line for frontline workers, including first responders and health care and law enforcement professionals. The drives were sponsored by TCF Bank in collaboration with Hatzalah nationwide and the American Red Cross, with support from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. The non-emergency assistance volunteer group Detroit Chaverim provided traffic control for the drives, held as part of the Yitzchok Lebovits COVID Plasma Initiative Foundation, with the support of the Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America. The outdoor testing sites were overseen by Hatzalah’s volunteer director, Dr. Steve McGraw, medical director of Oakland County Medical Control Authority and Emergency Department Chief at Providence Hospital, and Dr. Daniel Lebovic, blood-drive volunteer, hematologist and oncologist. The EMS coordinator for the Southfield Fire Deptartment contacted drive organizer Nachy Soloff of Southfield, asking if the department could partner with Hatzalah on a third drive, providing staff along with outreach and “advertising” beyond the Orthodox community. That drive takes place Sunday, May 31, at the Southfield Civic Center.

SHALOM KORN

There are over 3 million prostate cancer survivors in the U.S.

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| 93

the exchange community bulletin board | professional services

For information regarding advertising please call 248-351-5116 Deadline for ad insertion is 10am on Friday prior to publication.

LACOURE’S LANDSCAPING New landscaping, maintenance, re-landscaping, walkways, retaining walls, patios, sod, fall and spring cleanups, Shrub/Tree trimming & removal, irrigation winterization.

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Soul

of blessed memory

RUTH APPEL, 97, of Novi, died May 15, 2020. She loved swimming, dancing and visiting parks, zoos and museums. Mrs. Appel is survived by her sons and daughters-inlaw, Gary and Mimi Appel, Jeffrey and Judge Michelle Appel; daughter and sonin-law, Judy and Michael Applesmith; grandchildren, Andrew and Lauren Appel, Gabriel Appel, Samuel Appel, Raffi and Emmy Appel, Micah Appel, Matthew Applesmith and fiancee, Emma, Jacob Applesmith, Elliot Applesmith; great-grandson, Rowan Appel. She was the beloved wife of the late Dr. Max Appel; loving daughter of the late Jenny and the late Abraham Davis; dear sister and sister-in-law of the late Nate Davis and the late Miriam Davis. Contributions may be made to Yad Ezra, 2850 W. 11 Mile Road, Berkley, MI 48072; Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy Network, 6555 W. Maple Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48322. Graveside service was held at Clover Hill Park in Birmingham. Arrangements by Hebrew Memorial Chapel. GEORGE COOPER, 92, of West Bloomfield, died May 19, 2020. He was a plumbing contractor by trade, a pilot for fun and an all-around great guy. He was happy in the air or in the water but, most of all, on solid ground with Rose. His laugh will be missed by all. Mr. Cooper is survived by

He Had A Love Of Life

ark David Mitshkun, 71, of Dexter, died on May 8, 2020. He grew up in Detroit and then moved to Flint. He graduated in the first class of the Residential College at the University of Michigan. Mark and Diane Rosenblum fell in love in 1971 and they remained together. Mark decided to attend law school at Wayne State University. He became a lawyer because he was committed to fighting for justice and the civil rights of people who did not have a voice. He moved to Seattle, Washington, in 1974 and became a public defender. Mark and Diane were married in 1978. They moved from Seattle to Boston, where Mark taught in the Legal Aid program at Boston University. In 1989, they moved back to Michigan to be closer to family. Mark taught at the University of Michigan Law School in the Legal Aid Clinic for seven years. He then made the decision to work in the family business managing three mobile home parks. He retired when the business was sold in 2016. Mark was on the Fair Housing Center of Southeast & Mid-Michigan for many years. He was very committed to the mission of the center to end illegal housing discrimination. Mark loved life and enjoyed every minute of it. He sparkled with joy at so many things. He appreciated everything. His zest

for life was infectious; his sense of humor was wonderful. He was an avid fly fisherman and master fly tier, who tied thousands of flies, many of his own design. He loved the rivers and mountains out west as well as the ocean flats and had many wonderful times with his brother-in-law, Stephen Rosenblum, fishing the waters from Venezuela to Montana. Mark also loved golf, music, reading, writing, birding and nature in general. He loved the tall trees at the Villa Tranquilla (his beautiful home in Dexter, which he shared with Diane). Mark was a brilliant writer. When he was diagnosed with cancer in October 2019, he wrote health updates to friends and family. In his third “official health update,” Mark wrote the following on Nov. 27, 2019: “What has happened to me is the result of bad luck. OK, REALLY bad luck, but it is not the stuff of tragedy by any means. If I died today, I would be the first to tell you that I have had an amazingly wonderful and truly lucky life. I have lived like a king. I have lived in beautiful and vibrant cities on the West and East Coasts and the places I grew up. I have worked in dream jobs that were always focused on helping others. If I was not completely perfect in my work, it was not for lack of trying; and I always felt honored to be doing the work. I have been so lucky to have found outside activities that have sustained me and brought me into contact with the natural world

and its amazing wonders. I have seen things in nature that have seared themselves into my brain and made me truly appreciate the beauty and power of our planet.” Mark and Diane had a very special relationship which lasted almost 50 years. They were very lucky in so many ways. Their love was profound. Mark passed away peacefully with his loving wife by his side. He was a truly wonderful human being, beloved by all who were lucky to know him. He is survived by his beloved wife, Diane Rosenblum. He was the cherished brother-inlaw of Stephen Rosenblum (Rosalyn Sarver), Susan Rosenblum, Bill Lawrence; loving uncle of Aaron Rosenblum; Daniel Rosenblum (Jill), Sara Rosenblum (David Hernandez), Danica McAdam (Jeff), Joshua Lawrence (Molly); great-uncle of Theo and Emery Rosenblum, and Landon McAdam. He is also survived by many loving cousins and dozens of friends. Mr. Mitshkun was preceded in death by his sister, Beverley Lawrence; parents, Mary and Damor Mitshkun; in-laws, Ida and Albert Rosenblum. Contributions may be made to Fair Housing Center of Southeast and MidMichigan, P.O. Box 7825, Ann Arbor, MI 48107, fhcmichigan.org; American Civil Liberties Union, 2966 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48201,aclumich.org; Colorado Trout Unlimited, 1536 Wynkoop St., #320, Denver, CO 80202, coloradotu.org. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

continued on page 96 MAY 28 • 2020

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Soul

of blessed memory continued from page 95

his beloved wife of 73 years, Rose Cooper; his children, Janice and Larry Cohen, Gary and Terri Cooper, and Jackie and Michael Epstein; grandchildren, Aaron and Alyssa Fisher-Cohen, Jordan and Mandy Cohen, Danny Epstein, Sarah Epstein and Ben Cooper; great-grandchildren, Nora and Anna Fisher-Cohen and Kai Cohen; many loving nieces, nephews and friends. He was the brother of the late Leo Cooper and the late Morris Cooper. Interment was at Adat Shalom Memorial Park. Contributions may be made to Forgotten Harvest, 21800 Greenfield Road, Oak Park, MI 48237, forgottenharvest. org; Jewish Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit, 6710 W. Maple Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48322, jslmi.org; or to a charity of one’s choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel. SOL GRINGLAS, 100, of West Bloomfield, died May 14, 2020. He was born in Ostrowiec, Poland, the son of Leizor and Blima. He survived Auschwitz and Nordhausen. After the war, he met his wife, Paula, at a refugee camp in Germany before they immigrated with their first daughter to the United States. Mr. Gringlas took pride in his craft as a tailor for more than three decades. He loved painting, walking the JCC track and Sunday morning bagels with his grandchildren. He was a member of

96 |

MAY 28 • 2020

Congregation B’nai Moshe and Sharrit Haplaytah. Creative and resourceful, Sol could find a way to fix anything. Mr. Gringlas is survived by his daughters and son-in-law, Anne and Mark Herzberg of Farmington Hills, Helene Ceresnie of Farmington Hills; son and daughter-inlaw, Leonard and Charlene Gringlas of Farmington Hills; brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Reli Gringlas; grandchildren, Jackie Herzberg, Stephanie Herzberg and Aaron Kaufman, Emilie Herzberg, Marissa Ceresnie, Sam Gringlas, Rachel Gringlas; great-grandchildren, Ellie, Ruby, Franklin, Palina; a niece, a nephew, great-nieces and great-nephews, and many other relatives and friends. Mr. Gringlas was the beloved husband for 60 years of the late Paula Gringlas; dear father-in-law of the late Gary Ceresnie. Contributions may be made to Holocaust Memorial Center, 28123 Orchard Lake Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48334. Graveside service was held at Hebrew Memorial Park. Arrangements by Hebrew Memorial Chapel. ROBERT “BOB” HALPERIN, 98, of Southfield, died May 17, 2020. He was born in Detroit on May 27, 1921, graduated from Central High School, attended the University of Detroit and served in the Army/Air Force as a flight instructor, a role he loved. He pursued a nearly 40-year career in the build-

ing business, building many single-family homes in Dearborn, Livonia, Ypsilanti and elsewhere in the Detroit area. He then began a second career in real estate and mortgage brokerage, working for Ralph Manuel, then John Adams Mortgage. He retired at age 93. Robert was a longtime, active member of Franklin Athletic Club, exercising regularly until age 98. He served on the boards of directors of the Builders Association of Michigan, and Kingswood Hospital and was a longtime member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. He was an accomplished pilot and continued flying for many years. His greatest passion was golf, which he played until the age of 95. He especially enjoyed 22 consecutive annual summer trips to play golf with his son Eric in Oregon. Mr. Halperin is survived by his daughter, Nan (partner, Michael Orloff) of Charlottesville, Va.; son, Eric (Bebe Michel) of Gearhart, Ore.; longtime companion, Beverly Ross; nieces, nephews and their offspring around the country. He leaves behind many beloved colleagues and friends. Interment was at Machpelah Cemetery. Contributions may be made to Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Ave., Montgomery, AL 36104, splcenter. org; American Civil Liberties Union, 2966 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48201, aclumich.org; or to any food bank or charity of one’s choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

MARTIN SCOT KOSINS, 73, of Northville, died May 18, 2020. He is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Laurie and Sheldon Weintrob; niece and nephews, Dr. Sari and Steven Rosenberg, and Eric Weintrob; great-niece, Anna Isabelle Rosenberg. Contributions may be made to Michigan Humane Society, Development Dept., 30300 Telegraph Road, Suite 220, Bingham Farms, MI 48025, michiganhumane.org/ tributes. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel. KENNETH L. KRAVIS, 99, formerly of Birmingham, passed away May 14, 2020, in Delray Beach, Fla. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, March 16, 1921. He was a decorated WWII veteran, founder of the Detroit Merchandise Mart and was inducted into the French Legion of Honor for his valor during the Normandy Invasion. Mr. Kravis is survived by his son, David (Margo) Kravis; daughters, Barbara Lengyel and Cheryl (Barry) Greenberg; grandchildren, Andrew (Jennifer) Kravis, Torie (Adam) Gleicher, Ken (Tawny) Lengyel, Dan (Bonnie) Lengyel, Blair (Lauren) Byrnes, Jordan (Kelsey) Byrnes and Rachel Greenberg; 11 great-grandchildren. He was the beloved husband of the late Sophie Kravis; brother of the late Ida Beck. Interment will take place at the Boca Raton Mausoleum. Contributions may be made to a charity of one’s choice.

BETSY LOOMUS, 85, of Farmington Hills, died May 18, 2020. Betsy was born in Detroit on Dec. 8, 1934. She graduated from Central High School, attended the University of Michigan and graduated with a teaching degree from Wayne State University. Volunteering in the community was very important to Betsy. She was active in the League of Women Voters and held board positions at Adat Shalom Synagogue and United Hebrew Schools. She demonstrated her passion for art and theater by volunteering as a docent at the Detroit Institute of Arts and serving a term as president of the docent committee. Betsy loved to travel the world with her husband and especially enjoyed their many trips to Israel, where she celebrated her heritage. Betsy was dedicated to her family and friends. She developed and maintained decades-long friendships, many from childhood. She enjoyed hosting holiday meals for her family and took special pride in the achievements of her children and grandchildren and was deeply devoted to her beloved husband. Mrs. Loomus is survived by her beloved husband of 64 years, Gerald Loomus; children, Mark and Suzanne Loomus,

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,]LY`VUL L_WLYPLUJLZ SVZZ KPќLYLU[S` (UK ^OPSL [OLYL PZ H JLY[HPU Z[Y\J[\YL PU 1L^PZO M\ULYHSZ HUK YP[\HSZ P[»Z PTWVY[HU[ [OH[ P[ IYPUNZ ZVTL[OPUN TLHUPUNM\S [V HSS >L \UKLYZ[HUK [OH[ (UK ^L [YLH[ `V\Y MHTPS`»Z ^PZOLZ ^P[O HSS VM [OL YLZWLJ[ HUK JVTWHZZPVU [OL` KLZLY]L -YVT N\PKPUN [OL HYYHUNLTLU[Z ^P[OV\[ WYLZZ\YL [V [OL TLTVYPHS ZLY]PJL HUK [OL HWWLHYHUJL VM [OL JOHWLS P[ZLSM ^L HYL OLYL M\SS` OLYL [V TLL[ `V\Y L]LY` ULLK 0[»Z UV[ [OL VUS` ^H` ^L OLSW LHZL [OL I\YKLU VM H SVZZ )\[ P[»Z H ZWLJPHS [`WL VM JHYPUN [OH[ THRLZ H +VYMTHU KPќLYLUJL

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| 97

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6LYDQ 0D\ 6LYDQ -XQH 6LYDQ -XQH Miriam Elias Minnie Cohen Steven Glenn Bektashi Joseph Fantich David Fishman Samuel A. Borak Jenny Pinsker Lawrence R. Gechter Lillian Feuerman Jonathan Simkovitz Morris Shindler Sidney Fischer Hyman Weinman Harry Shriman Joseph Gittelman Rachel Steinbock Joseph Jaffa 6LYDQ -XQH Rebecca Temchin Abe Meisner Mildred Bloomberg Nettie Newman Arthur Edros 6LYDQ -XQH Frederick Endelman Daniel Greenblatt 6LYDQ -XQH Louis Finkelstein Della Gottlieb Sara Kravitz Jennie Rosen Bessie Glieberman Jacob Mandell Irving Katz Leon Sitrin Arnold Manko Juda Lachar Bernard Gordon Skully Dorothy Meckler Dorothy Lane Bence Mermelstein 6LYDQ -XQH Max Lefkowitz Libby Rosenberg Belle Clayman Helen Amhowitz Rosenfeldt Mary Member Jack Elkin Edith Norber Eva SInger Moses Lazar William Schulman Fanny Stolarsky Fanny Rubinstein Celia Sher Anna Weisberger Samuel Satovsky Bertha Torgow Jerome Shalit Julius H Wainer Kate Winston

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MAY 28 â&#x20AC;˘ 2020

of blessed memory continued from page 97

Monuments and Markers Bronze Markers Memorial Duplicating Cemetery Lettering & Cleaning

Our State. Our Town.

Soul

Debby and Steve Portney, Shelly Loomus and Lon Zaback; grandchildren, Joseph Loomus, Michael Loomus, Rebecca (Portney) and Mitchell Kirby, David Portney and Taylor Novice, Daniel Portney, Alexander Kavner, Joshua Kavner, Kyle Zaback and Rachel Zaback; many nieces, nephews and cousins. Mrs. Loomus was the daughter of the late Alan and the late Mazie Brown; sister of the late Stephen Brown; sister-in-law of Maureen and Sandy Kornwise, Sandy (Brown) and Bob Matthews, and the late Maxine Flagg. Interment was at Adat Shalom Memorial Park. Contributions may be made toÂ Beaumont Foundation,Â Patient Resource Fund,Â 3711 W. 13 Mile Road,Â Royal Oak, MI 48073;Â Adat Shalom Synagogue,Â 29901 Middlebelt,Â Farmington Hills, MI 48334,Â adatshalom. org/tributes-make-a-donation-in-honor-or-in-memory;Â or to a charity of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel. LARRY ROSEN, 78, of West Bloomfield, died May 16, 2020. He is survived by his beloved wife, Annette Rosen; children, Bruce (Miriam) Rosen, Randi (Troy) Barber, Amy (Charlie) Alam and Matthew Rosen; grandchildren, Zachary, Jacob, Emily, Alec, David, Elie and Bella; sistersin-law, Barbara Rosen, Carol (Woody) Simon and Susie (the late Michael) Gantz.

Mr. Rosen was the devoted brother of the late Hy Rosen and the late Saul Rosen. Interment was held at Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Birmingham. Contributions may be made to a charity of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s choice. Arrangements by Dorfman Chapel. MORRIS â&#x20AC;&#x153;MORRYâ&#x20AC;? SILVERMAN, 86, of Bloomfield Hills, died May 17, 2020.Â A lifelong Detroiter, Morry was born in Detroit in 1933 and grew up on Collingwood Street. He attended Durfee Jr. High and Central High School. Morry then attended Wayne State University. He met Shayna on May 18, 1956, and they married one year later on June 9, 1957. Morry was a modest man who always prioritized doing the right thing and placed honesty above all; these principles guided him in life and business. Since the day that he started his insurance company in 1958, Morry took care of his clients like family; he made their lives his priority and deeply cherished their relationships. Morry understood the importance of his community and of giving back. He selflessly gave his time to those in need, serving in the U.S. Army (â&#x20AC;&#x2122;56-â&#x20AC;&#x2122;57) and later acting as a longtime board member of the Jewish Vocational Services as well as the Jewish Community Center. His mission in life was

to make everyone laugh and smile. Mr. Silverman is survived by his wife of 63 years, Shayna Silverman; his children, Jeffery and Eric Silverman; son-in-law, Ed Sachse; grandchildren, Jacob Sachse, Erin Sachse and Mikel Silverman; his sister, Bernice Tinsky; brother and sisterin-law, Gordon and Gloria Silverman; many loving nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. The Silverman family thanks caregiver Kim Ruffin for her compassion and love. He was the beloved and doting father of the late Julie Silverman Sachse; loving and devoted son of the late Anne and the late Julius Silverman;

beloved brother of the late Harvey Silverman, the late Henrietta Bitterman, the late Lorraine Soverinsky and the late Paul Silverman. Interment was at Clover Hill Park Cemetery. Contributions may be made to JVS Human Services, 29699 Southfield Road, Southfield, MI 48076, jvshumanservices. org; or Yad Ezra, 2850 W. 11 Mile Road, Berkley, MI 48072, yadezra.org. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel. JANET STEIN, 68, of West Bloomfield, died May 16, 2020. She was a

graduate of Michigan State and began her career teaching English to immigrants in Detroit. She was also a master chef, avid tennis player and loved playing cards. She worked for many years at Lee’s Specialty as well as starting her own businesses with her sister, Amy. Janet was the beloved wife, travel companion and collection curator of Dr. Milton Mutchnick; amazing mother/stepmother of Matthew and Jessie Stein, Andrew and Beth Stein, Ian and Stephanie Mutchnick, Aric and Caryn Mutchnick, Sean and Jen Mutchnick, Nathan and Kiersten Mutchnick, Rachel and Michael Wassel;

fabulous “Nanet” to Mia, Ella, Jake, Hallie and Damon Stein; Gabriel, Miriam, Lev, Xander, Asher, Izak and Zoe Mutchnick, Elia and Holden Wassel; cherished daughter of Dorie Miller and the late Bruce Miller; granddaughter of the late Nathan and the late Fannie Miller, the late Manny and the late Jeannette Norman; loving sister of James Miller and Elyse Sutherland, Amy Weinstein and Dan Bates, and William and Beverly Leuchter; generous aunt and “Queen Bee” to Emily and Ben Weinstein. She is also survived by many other loving nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. Interment was at Clover Hill Park Cemetery. continued on page 100

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MAY 28 • 2020

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Soul

of blessed memory continued from page 99

Contributions may be made to American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, P.O. Box 250243, West Bloomfield, MI 48325, weizmann-usa. org; Brilliant Detroit, 5675 Larkins St., Detroit, MI 48210, brilliantdetroit.org/donate; City Year Detroit, P.O. Box 412755, Boston, MA 022412755; or to an education or cancer charity of your choice. Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel. ROY STEINBOCK, 76, of Novi, died May 15, 2020. He was an Air

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Force veteran and a dentist in the Metro Detroit area for more than 40 years. Dr. Steinbock is survived by his beloved wife, Sharon Ziegler-Steinbock; son and daughter-in-law, Alex and Bonnie Steinbock; daughters and sons-in-law, Ronda and Dan Reibscheid, Kathleen Steinbock and Stephen Flores, Marie Steinbock; grandchildren, Sophie, Claire, Elijah, Stella, Owen and Eleanor; many other loving family members and friends. Contributions may be made to the Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy Network or to Forgotten Harvest. Arrangements by Dorfman Chapel.

DANIEL WATERSTONE, 64, of New York, formerly of Michigan, died April 13, 2020. He is survived by brother and sister-in-law, Jack and Hannah Waterstone; sister and brother-in-law, Dena and Boruch Rabinowitz of Passic, N.J. Contributions may be made to Tzedkah Enhancement Project (TEP), 25991 Marlowe Place, Oak Park, MI 48237. Graveside service was held at Hebrew Memorial Park. Arrangements by Hebrew Memorial 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@ renmedia.us.

Raskin the best of everything

Golden Mushroom Remembered Who can forget the elegant dishes of Chef Cihelka?

hen neighborhood fine dining returns to happy folks following the terrible coronavirus days, joy will bring many smiles again. Excellent hereabouts restaurants like the Golden Mushroom with its loyal patronage will never change … The owner, Danny Raskin Reid Ashton, Senior Columnist also former head of the Michigan Restaurant Association, said, “People are not going to give up caviar, champagne and souffles.” The former delicatessen (Rascal House) became a fine dining eatery with its stunning new appointments and elegant culinary presentations … It was regularly honored with wall coverings of citations and plaques. Although signature dishes at Golden Mushroom had always

Master Chef Milos Cihelka

featured elegant dishes, guests were continually introduced to new delicacies prepared by its talented culinary team. Without any doubt, the key decision of hiring and partnership away from the Original London Chop House of Milos Cihelka, Michigan’s first certified master chef, had itself caused a huge commotion … As the coveted executive chef, Milos oversaw the Golden Mushroom’s kitchen for about 15 years with a reputation of excellence unrivaled in Michigan. Restaurants like the Golden Mushroom will succeed again, and their many dedicated customers will gladly return the smiles of its owners. VICARI VOICES are loud that new Executive Chef Mark Cassadi is no stranger in taking over on retirement of Bill Hall at Andiamo West, Telegraph and 15 Mile, Bloomfield Township … Mark had previously been head chef at Andiamo Trattoria

in Grosse Pointe … Joe and Rosalie Vicari’s Brownies On The Lake has been made even easier for boat dining on their Lake St. Clair vessels … A huge menu is available for them, too, as a waitstaff member brings the selected items to them for joyous consumption. REMEMBERING … The numerous rides to one of Chuck Muer’s favorite restaurants among many … This time it was his noted elegant pet eatery, The Gandy Dancer, once built in Ann Arbor as an early 1879 train station, for Chuck’s favorite seafood delights … And enjoying a luscious juicy steak and homemade minestrone soup at the original Lelli’s Inn on Woodward … served like a vision of New York’s Little Italy in Manhattan. OLDIE BUT GOODIE (requested again) … While out shopping, a young girl noticed an elderly lady sitting on a park bench sobbing her eyes out … The girl stopped and asked why she was crying … The lady said,

“I have a 22-year-old husband at home. He makes love to me every morning and then gets up and makes me pancakes, sausages, fresh fruit and freshly-ground coffee.” “That sounds terrific,” said the girl. “So why are you crying?” The older woman continued, “He makes me homemade soup for lunch and my favorite cake.” “For that you are crying?” asked the girl. The aged woman says, “For dinner he makes me a gourmet meal with wine and my favorite dessert and then makes love to me until 2 o’clock in the morning.” The girl asks again, “So why in the world are you crying?” The elderly lady sobbed again and said, “I can’t remember where I live!” CONGRATS … To Leslie Pardo on her birthday … To Alvin Frommer on his birthday. Email dannyraskin2132@gmail.com.

FRESH Weekly Headlines

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

Mazel Tov, Class of 2020

nfortunately, this year because of COVID-19, our high school and college students will experience a graduation without formal, in-person ceremonies. As yet, we just can’t risk gathering in large numbers to see our students get their diplomas, hear the keynote speeches and see Mike Smith Alene and the new gradGraham Landau uates toss their Archivist Chair mortarboards into the air. Of course, there will be innovative virtual celebrations and it should be very interesting to see how these develop. You can, however, always count on the JN’s annual “Cap & Gown” issue to make it a celebration. This has been a tradition in the Detroit Jewish Community since the 1980s. We also searched for information on graduations of the past in the William Davidson Digital Archive of Detroit Jewish History. The term “high school graduations” was cited more than 1,500 times. One can also search for “Cap & Gown,” “Graduation,” “Valedictorian, or other related search words. While extensive coverage of high school graduations did not occur until the 1960s, there are some interesting stories from earlier years in the Archive. The earliest mention of a graduation was

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in the Aug. 25, 1916, issue of the Jewish Chronicle. This article is actually a wedding announcement for Lillian Goodman, who had just married Emery Monash, but it cites Goodman as the youngest high school graduate in Detroit in 1911. In 1917, there was a story about Ivor Kahn graduating from Highland Park High School. Kahn was that school’s first Jewish valedictorian — and quite the athlete as well as an accomplished scholar. In general, announcements of high school graduations in the early years of the Chronicle and JN are usually brief items about graduating classes in weekly news listings such as “Congregational Activities” or “Society News.” In the June 18, 197,1 issue of the JN, there is a small section titled “Youth on the Move,” which features the names of four high students who graduated with distinction. The current Cap & Gown issue began in the 1980s as a section highlighting “Smart Kids,” most of whom had their names submitted by their guidance counselors or principals. The issue evolved to include all students with a 3.5 or better grade average. Although Cap & Gown issues were initially devoted to graduating high school students, they soon included notes from families that congratulated their college graduates,

as well as congratulatory ory advertisements from various colleges. After a few years, publisher Arthur Horwitz decided that the Cap & Gown issuee should be open to anyy and all Jewish high school students from the region. This madee the special issue what it is today — a community-wide high school graduation n “yearbook” that celebrates all ll of our graduates. With the cancellation of graduation ceremonies this year, our Cap & Gown issue takes on added d significance. We hope Cap & Gown 2020 is a feel-good moment for our entire community. Congratulations to all our graduates! Mazel Tov! SPECIAL NOTE: Yael Eichhorn, the 2020 Detroit Jewish News Foundation Summer Intern, assiststed with research for this Looking Back. Yael is in her second year at Michigan State, majoring in religious studies with a minor in Jewish studies.

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

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