INSIDE: DETROIT/BUILDING BOOM AT HILLEL DAY SCHOOL; BUSINESS/AN ARENA-SIZE SPORTS BAR AIMED AT COUCH POTATOES. 15 - 7R711 E 1 750 ,aguismagemdrommainiam THE 13 ELUL 5755 / SEPTEMBER 8, 1995 Of 'No' Interest For 100 Years /- NEWS inviipopm Close Up: If The Trolls Only Knew What The JUPers Do ... A pillar of community stability, Detroit's Hebrew Free Loan Association marks its landmark centennial on Sunday. PHIL JACOBS EDITOR 13 o through He- brew Free Loan's record books from decades ago and you'll read the carefully handwritten and blotted entries of loans for push- cart horses. This was typi- cal of how a peddler started his business. And some of those pushcarts led to busi- nesses that continue today in Detroit. Now, 100 years later, the minutes read almost re- markably the same. Though we're not talking pushcarts, the need for a loan for a used car to get a person to work is as vital as a horse once was. But it doesn't have to be a horse. It can be hand tools for a vocation, money to help pay college tuition or agency's centennial cele- bration set for 7 p.m. Sunday at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, can tell sto- ries of how families used their loans to begin their lives anew. Then they do- nated money to the agen- cy. She knows of people who have kept their old pay- ment books as a reminder of how they were helped by the Jewish community. Many of those memories will come alive at Sunday's event, which will feature a keynote speech by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. The event is chaired by Henry P. Lee. Paul Hack is Hebrew Free Loan's current president. "We are not a charity, nor are we a loan agency," said Mrs. Borman. "This community has a long history of people helping people. We know that without Hebrew Free Loan, there would be people who might have otherwise fallen through the cracks." Dr. Mark Diem wasn't falling through any cracks, but he knew almost Loan applicants at the Hebrew 30 years ago that without Free Loan office in the 1930s. Hebrew Free Loan the pos- sibility of medical school would have been more dif- funds to provide a modest ficult. Dr. Diem, who now bar mitzvah for a child who sits on the HFL board and RUTH LITTMANN STAFF WRITER might otherwise go with- on the Jewish Education out. Whatever a person's Loan Service board as well, o one knows. reasons, Hebrew Free Loan needed help after his par- Jewish communal profes- has recorded well over ents, Rose and Sidney sionals might join ranks of the 10,000 loans and has seen Diem, used their savings to unemployed. Services to the more than 97 percent re- help their son get started needy might be slashed. And social- paid. in school. welfare agencies might witness 17 Marlene Borman, HFL's percent of their total revenue evap- "I guess now that I'm on immediate past president orate. who helped organize the NO INTEREST page 8 This fall, if the U.S. Senate ap- By The of Gitche Gurnee Forgotten communities, dotting Michigan's northern wilderness, keep the faith despite forces threatening their extinction. RUTH LITTMANN STAFF WRITER Story on page 32 Agencies Are Waiting With Bated Breath N proves budget refoi nis proposed by the House of Representatives, metro Detroit's Jewish community stands to lose $4 million in funding from state and federal governments over the next seven years. "We just don't know what's going to happen, and it's scary not know- ing," says Judah Isaacs, senior plan- ning associate at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit. The ifs, coulds and maybes might be resolved after Oct. 1, when mem- bers of Congress will renew their bat- tle for fiscal reform and a balanced budget by the year 2002. Then again, legislation could get mired in parti- san bickering, thereby prolonging Mr. Isaac's uncertainty. "Everything's hanging in the bal- ance," he says. The plan adopted in mid-August by the House calls for cuts in all fed- eral programs except Social Security, defense and the annual interest pay- AGENCIES page 10