saw Chicago as the Promised Land. When it was
By the time he arrived at the Conservative
time for Ms. Rautbort to consider graduate Movement's Jewish Theological Seminary, Rab-
schools, she found herself leaning across Lake bi Bergman says he didn't really think he would
Michigan. School became her ticket out of the return to Michigan, given the difficulty of land-
Motor City.
ing a coveted rabbinic post.
It's a "clear-cut memory: having the Univer-
He says New York was exciting. "I wasn't mar-
sity of Michigan's acceptance letter to graduate ried when I went to New York. I did not find that
school [in clinical social work]," and an accep- Detroit was a fabulous place if you 4 A,Tere single
tance from Loyola University of Chicago. Ms. and observant but sort of modern also," says the
Rautbort, from West Bloomfield, opted to take spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Abraham
out a loan and go 300 miles west, rather than re- Hillel Moses in West Bloomfield.
main at home.
Dr. Raphael Goldstein, 33, Julie Fisher, 29,
"I was really interested in being somewhere and Karen Ginis, 25, also wanted a taste of big-
else besides Michigan, interested in having the city life.
big-city experience."
"I just wanted to get out of here — not because
For Ms. Wilson, a Farmington Hills native, the of negative things here as much as there was
story's much the same.
more to offer in other cities. I still feel that way,"
Now an account coordinator at W.B. Doner says Dr. Goldstein, an Oak Park native. "I want-
& Co., Ms. Wilson moved to Chicago after col- ed somewhere a little bit more cosmopolitan."
lege. The Windy City is close enough to skip home
While his wife, Dr. Julie Goldstein, applied for
to Michigan for a weekend, she says — "a cheap dental residencies in both Chicago and Detroit,
flight, but far enough away that I was getting he applied only in Chicago. An out-of-state resi-
out of Michigan."
dency provided "an easy way to move."
Growing up in Oak Park, Rabbi Aaron
Julie Fisher worked in New York for a year af-
Bergman, 33, says he yearned to live in New York ter college, in Macy's buyers training program.
City. "It just seemed like a very exciting place."
The Bloomfield Hills native then headed for
Chicago, to work as a buyer for a chain of linen
stores and later in the jewelry industry.
"I was never interested in staying in Detroit,"
says Mrs. Fisher. "I wanted to live in a city, and
Detroit just doesn't lend itself to the city expe-
rience very well."
Karen Ginis left for the same reasons: a new
experience, in a real city, where she did not need
a car. Ms. Ginis has lived in Washington, D.C.,
and Japan.
"I'm not quite sure why I didn't want to be
in Michigan. Growing up in Michigan is not very
fun," she says. "I wanted something more excit-
ing.
"It had a lot to do with driving for some rea-
son. It just seems really convenient when you
can go from place to place on public transporta-
tion."
D
etroit is not a hub of investment banking
firms, nor is there an abundance of mag-
azine or entertainment jobs.
But from law, business and medicine
to insurance and real estate, not to mention myr-
iad career opportunities in the automotive in-
dustry, Detroit does offer opportunities. Yet some
Julie and Raphael
Goldstein and
family moved back
to live near family.
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