THE JEWISH NEWS
UP FRONT
This Week's Top Stories
Kosher restaurants have been wiped
from the Detroit scene.
Will it always bet is
JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER
I
ryipg
, iill.:.45h remembers the rich smells and crisp tabl
cleditliThis aunt's kosher restaurant above Goldman's
Drugs on Hastings Street in the 1920s.
The Southfield resident can almost see the finely
dressed patrons and taste the delicious meals his aunt _.
made for the customers who dined there five days a week.=:.
"Then, there were more people
who were concerned about kosher Steve Rabinowitz is
$250 ' 00 0 . in de
food," Mr. Lash said 'There was ob f . now
n of
rom the closg
viously enou gh that many could restaurant, Cilassic tu
make a living in those restaurants." Coney Island. "The
That was a different time, a dif- only appointment I
ferent place. It was an era when have on my calendar is
kosher waiters formed a union, and with a bankruptcy
the restaurants where they worked attorney," he said.
-
The Last Of A Dying Breed
As kosher butchers disappear from the scene,
there is no one there to carry on the independent trade.
JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER
PHOTOS BY DANIEL LIPPITT
ugene Feldman sits inside his brightly lit kosher
butcher shop and makes a dark prediction about
— the independent kosher meat business in the met-
ropolitan Detroit area.
"In about five years, there will be no kosher butchers.
It will just be the supermarkets," said the owner of Dex-
ter-Davison Kosher Meats.
It is a sad prophecy about the fate of independent
kosher butchers, but one that is close to reality.
Two months ago, Jack Cohen, owner of Cohen & Son
Kosher Meats, took down his neon sign that read "We
Deliver LI 7-4121" and sold his equipment, some of which
he had used for the full 48 years he had been a butch-
er. His former shop is awaiting the debut of a vegetari-
an carry-out business.
What used to be a booming industry in metropolitan
Detroit has wasted away to a handful of hangers on. In
the 1920s and 1930s, as many as 80 kosher butchers
had shops in the Detroit area; four independent butch-
ers operate currently, and two of them have plans to
close shop within two years.
Delle Cohen, Mr. Cohen's wife and business partner,
said the community will have to get used to the change.
"I don't think there is a future for butchers," she said.
"Isn't that sad? I can't think of a sadder thing."
Although many of the
Above: Max Luss of butchers died or went out of
Superior Kosher
business before the Jewish
Meat plans to pass community made its north-
the business to his
west migration into the sub-
son. Here, a
worker at the shop urbs, one recent event has
rinses meat after it helped the decline: a rule by
the Council of Orthodox Rab-
was soaked and
bis (Vaad Harabonim), the
salted.
current providers of kosher
Left: Jack Cohen
supervision for the meat
said there was no
trade in the Detroit area.
one to take over his
"We have a standard that
business. "I would
was instituted 10 years ago
give the business
away free if I could that any butcher who applied
for supervision would have to
pass it on to a
young person," he be personally [religiously] ob-
said.
servant," said Rabbi Elim-
elech Goldberg, a member of
the Vaad's presidium. "That is the best, if the person
himself believes in it."
While the rule limits who can go into the business, a
"grandfather" clause allowed those already in business to
remain supervised regardless of their religious affiliation.
In keeping with the rule, Rabbi Goldberg said he fun-
DYING BREED page 22
could be found on nearly every block of the Hastings
Street neighborhood.
But the era has passed. Hastings Street is no longer,
its buildings torn down and the area excavated to make
TIIkrAT page 18
Wolf In Sheep's
Clothing?
Cloning of mammals has local Jewish
leaders contemplating a brave new world.
JULIE WIENER STAFF WRITER
olly the sheep can easily blend into the flock. And
that is exactly what people are finding so fright-
ening about this wooly creature from Scotland
that's stealing headlines around the world.
The first successful clone of a mammal, Dolly's cre-
ation challenges centuries-old assumptions about life
and raises the possibility that humans may some day be
cloned as well.
Local rabbis had varying responses to the cloning news
SHEEP'S CLOTHING page 24
D