88, Friday, November 23, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

el Jerome Ravitz is a
product of the boys."
The boys — defined
by the 60-year-old De-
troit City Councilman as
a Jewish peer group — played a major
role in prompting him to live what he
calls a "secular" adulthood.
Indeed, his Jewish peer group was
so powerful that in 1955, at age 31,
Ravitz co-authored a paper on the sub-
ject in which he said, The influence
which adolescent peer groups exert
over their members may either sup-
port the values of parents or challenge
them.
"The greater the peer group's
integration and cohesion, the more it
will usurp the role of the family in the
socialization process. In courtship and
marriage, social and political beliefs
and behavior, and occupational selec-
tion, the peer group .. has markedly
influenced the behavior of its mem-
bers."
And so it was for Ravitz, who grew
up in an Orthodox Jewish family in the
Dexter and Linwood neighborhoods.
"I had a &.i.r Mitzvah, but after
that I had little involvement with
Judaism for two reasons," said Ravitz.
Ritual was of little interest to him, he
said, and there was the peer group's
influence.The peer group, composed
now primarily of professional people
— physicians, professors, psychiat-
rists — has survived through the years
and its members still visit each other
periodically.
While religion was a frequent sub-
ject for discussion in the peer group,
Ravitz wrote in his paper, Not even
those whose parents were the most de-
vout exhibited any real interest in
religious worhip, then or since.
Ravitz said his father, who owned
a head gear manufacturing company
in the old Detroit wholesale district,
now the site of the Pontchartrain
Hotel, "stood by me."
"He was not doctrinaire and we
had many discussions about religion,"
said Ravitz. "I think my father contin-
ued a religiouslife partly for social
reasons.
"So I have had little involvement
with the organized Jewish community
over the years although I was associ-

ouncii Maverick:-

Has long-time Detroit Councilman Mel Ravitz
changed over the years, or has the city changed
around him?

BY BERL FALBAUM
Special to The Jewish News

ated with the Jewish Community
Council .for awhile and with the
Jewish. Labor Committee, a liberal-
oriented organization, on a part-time
basis."
His six children, he said, have fol-
lowed secular lives. When one of his
sons was asked as a youngster about
his religion, he responded that he was
"public."
But Ravitz acknowledges that his
liberal political philosophy stemmed,
at least in part, from his Jewish back-
ground.
"My father was a Roosevelt
Democrat, as many Jewish people
were, and he was always concerned
with justice, fairness and equality of
treatment," he said, and that carried
over to me."

Although he wrote in his 1955
paper that his peer group differed from
the typical American teenage group in
that it displayed a "very deep and live
interest in public affairs," Ravitz said
it was pure chance that he navigated
toward a public career.
He was completing a doctorate in
sociology at Ann Arbor while teaching
at Wayne State to support a wife and
two children when he learned of a
Wayne State rule that if a faculty
member did not complete his doctorate
in four years he could not continue to
teach full-time.
That rule forced him to go job-
hunting and he landed a position with
the Detroit City Planning Commission
while continuing to teach part-time at
Wayne.
He was given the responsibility of
community organizer, primarily be-
cause the commission director be-
lieved a "sociologist ought to be able to
do that."
"I found the work interesting and
by 1960 I had unintentionally built
quite a constituency; many people
recommended that I run for the City
Council."

That was the year former Mayor
Louis C. Miriani, under pressure from
a high crime rate, ordered a
"crackdown" on crime which was in-
terpreted as a policy aimed at blacks.
It was also the year that a newcomer,
Jerome P. Cavanagh, had the nerve to
challenge the entrenched political es-
tablishment and the incumbent Mi-
riani. •
The black community was in-
furiated by Miriani's police crackdown
and out of the campaign was born the
slogan, "Five Plus One" — meaning it
supported the election of five liberal
councilmen, Ravitz being among
them, and a new mayor, Jerry
Cavanagh. To the surprise of political
pundits, Cavanagh won, and so did a
liberal council majority, including
Ravitz.
However, Ravitz said he had not
tied himself to Cavanagh's coattails;
indeed, he said, he had only met the
mayoral candidate once or twice dur-
ing the election campaign.
His Jewish background played a
minor, if any role, in the election al-
though, he said, it was discussed by his

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